Where To, Sir?
by nocturnefaure
Summary: Foyle and Sam didn't really hit it off on Day One…or did they?
1. Chapter 1

Title:** Where To, Sir?**

Summary: Foyle and Sam didn't really hit it off on Day One…or did they?

Genre: (Im)pure, (almost) unadulterated Foyle-fluff.

A/N: An antidote to all those fics that make them play the waiting game.

* * *

It took a lot to surprise DCS Foyle, but he was definitely startled when he realised what the girl had done. Keegan lay sprawled on the ground, so still and wide-eyed that for a split second Foyle thought he might be dead. Miss Stewart was holding up a dustbin lid like a Roman shield, standing tall and a little stern in her neat MTC uniform. She was magnificent.

Foyle adjusted his tie, collecting his wits as he processed the scene. A swift replay of his conduct towards Sam Stewart on her first day frankly shamed him: he had been both brusque and churlish. Certainly his normal gentlemanliness had been absent, but it was to this courteous behaviour that he now reverted, somewhat embarrassed at how his body was subtly vibrating in… was it _just_ astonishment? He cleared his throat quietly. "Sam?"

The slightest hint of anxiety entered her large brown eyes, as if she doubted his approval at her intervention. She had, after all, disobeyed him and left the car. "Sir?"

He widened his own eyes in disbelief at the words about to issue from his mouth, considering the doubts he had entertained about her as she chattered at him earlier in the day.

"Thank you," he uttered simply but emphatically, and walked on past her to the car to fetch handcuffs for his unconscious prisoner.

Sam's chin went up at his praise, and she tried her utmost not to gloat. _Victory! He wasn't cross at her for helping him! Hooray!_

She was quiet during the drive back, slightly anxious for her new boss as the groggy fraudster struggled to waken. Little did she understand that Foyle's grim concern, as he monitored Keegan, was out of fear the man would lash out in retaliation at his driver.

His preoccupation gave Sam the chance to glance at the Chief Super more without him noticing. It had struck her from their first moment of meeting how good-looking Mr Foyle was; granted he was older, but he had _such_ an expressive face. His boyish surprise upon first laying eyes on her had been utterly adorable, but Sam also liked his shrewd and studious and even glaring looks; it fascinated her that the same pair of brilliant blue eyes could be ice cold, or soft and warm as cornflowers in a sunny pasture.

There was much to be done once they had returned to the station after lunch. It didn't take Foyle long to quietly scare Keegan into talking, but he also had additional calls to make and interviews to set up. It was six o'clock and the station had emptied out, but Sam didn't mind a bit; she'd explored the facility and chatted with a few constables, getting the lay of the land in her new setting. But she wanted to be helpful to her new employer if he needed her. That was what made today feel so satisfying; she got the feeling she could truly help him, and the funny little frisson she already felt when she thought about seeing him was energising as well.

Sam knocked quietly at DCS Foyle's partially open office door.

The DCS appeared to be deep in thought as she peered around it. He sat in his shirtsleeves, head tilted down in concentration, looking positively beautiful in the soft yellow lamplight of his desk.

He glanced at her with a kind, apologetic look in his eyes, as if registering suddenly how late he'd kept her here. In the lovely blue depths Sam saw this time an ephemeral note of sadness.

She didn't really want to leave him. "Can I get you anything while you finish up, sir? Tea?"

"You needn't wait, Sam. I can walk home if you'd like to get going."

"Wouldn't take a moment. Let me just…" she trailed off as she slipped out of the room.

Foyle's eyes drifted after her, and he gave one slow, languorous blink before frowning at himself and turning his tired gaze back to his papers.

A few minutes later she reappeared with a tray, teapot and cups, milk, tiny pot of sweetener, and neatly folded tea-towel.

"I've brought honey because there wasn't any sugar," she said, trying unsuccessfully to hide the pride in her voice at the presentation. She poured his cup with a flourish and began to hand it to him, but his hint of an appreciative smile quite disarmed her. She spilled a sizeable dollop of the milky tea into his lap, and he involuntarily scraped back his chair in attempted escape. Panicking, Sam grasped the tea towel and, not quite thinking, darted forwards with her hand as if to mop him up.

Foyle could hardly have her going for his groin, even after the mishap calmed some of what he'd feared to have her see there. He reflexively grabbed her wrist tightly, and two pairs of startled eyes met at the electricity of the contact.

Before she even knew it, Sam had reached out a small, shy hand and touched his cheek—just the gentlest, lightest caress—anything to apologise for her nervous clumsiness, and to assuage that flicker of pain she had seen earlier.

Foyle shut his eyes, furrowing his brow. _What was she doing?_ And what was _he_ doing, letting her? But oh, God, it felt so comforting and sweet. _She_ was sweet. And lively and smart and strong… The lonely policeman stood suddenly, and before his usual 'better judgement' could stop him, he had gathered the girl into his arms and kissed her soundly.

Had Sam resisted him in any way, Foyle would have regained possession of his senses and immediately begged her pardon, but innocent and inexperienced as she was, Sam had never felt anything so pleasurable, so _right_ as his warm soft lips on hers, gentle and demanding at the same time. All she wanted was to go on feeling these sensations: his hands cradling her head as he moved his mouth urgently over hers, the warm press of his body all along her own.

Thinking all her Christmases had come at once, Sam tightened her arms about his neck and moaned softly. The tip of his tongue was engaged in tender exploration of her lips, seeming to urge them open, and the surge of pleasure she felt as she complied made her feel lightheaded and powerful all at once. It struck her that this power was even more intense than that she had sensed when felling Keegan with a dustbin lid, and yet it was disarming, too. She moaned again in something between helplessness and triumph.

Her breathily impassioned sound brought Christopher Foyle back to earth with a jolt, and he wrenched away from her, hoping in the same instant that his determined motion of separation had not harmed her in any way.

But her eyes were still dreamily closed. "Sir…"

"Oh, God, Miss Stewart, I-I-I…"

Sam flung herself to close the space between them, clasping his chest against hers in an almost fierce embrace, and experimenting with a movement of her own tongue the very second their mouths met again.

Christopher Foyle was an honourable man, and he knew he had to stop this madness, no matter how absurdly honest and beautiful it was feeling. It was just as if this young woman had been made for him to hold and kiss—the way her tongue played eagerly with his as his lips crushed against hers and the way his lower body fitted warm and hard against her softness. If this was wrong, as he kept trying to remind himself it was, why did it feel so heavenly and soothing? Oh, just a few moments more of this bliss…another sip of her vitality, like succour to a starving man…

Sam pulled back just the slightest bit and tucked her face against his neck, catching her breath but not loosening her snug hold on him. Both their hearts beat rapidly, but it did not alarm or horrify her that she could feel against her thighs how definitely aroused Mr Foyle had become; on the contrary, she was thrilled by it. She knew what it meant, from the few kisses she had shared with boys in school and at a couple of social engagements during her MTC training. But none of those had ever come close to the delicious intensity of _this_ man's kiss. Never before had she felt ready to carry through on the desire suggested by those earlier fevered fumblings.

Never before. But in a flash of clarity Sam saw that she was on the brink of something different and special…

"_Oh, God, Miss Stewart, I-I-I…"_

_Miss Stewart?_ Oh, no. She wasn't having _that._ Not after _this._ "You didn't call me 'Miss Stewart' on the Stade this afternoon. You called me Sam," she admonished gently. "I caught him for you, didn't I? And knocked him cold for you. I even hoped," she breathed, "you'd think… that I was clever? Did you think that, _Sir_?"

Foyle's eyes closed, conjuring once more the scene upon the beach. "I thought," he grated, trembling with the effort of composure, "that you were possibly the most arresting thing I'd ever seen. And I would never"— his eyes squeezed tight shut—"_ever_ make the error of underestimating you again." He took a deep and measured breath to calm his nerves. "My name… is Christopher. And while… your arms are round me, it feels entirely appropriate that you should call me by my name."

He bent his head and moved a trembling hand to tilt her chin so he could once more fasten his lips to hers. And this time—_this time_—he could feel the raw, inexorable pull of her that drew him from himself and separated him from reason, logic and the cold control demanded by his role as a policeman.

He felt the prickle of his instincts pushing rationality behind him. The heady spice of intuition, whispering the simple truth of _this_ before his reason caught up with his senses. _This,_ then, was the unrefined instinctual urge that overrode his scruples, conquered all restraining force and fuelled his desire: the image of Samantha Stewart, stalwart and indomitable, standing fast against the tide of crime and filth and general depravity that wore him down and served to undermine his faith in human nature.

This girl stood for the pure antithesis of every single squalid, soul-destroying—_Christ!_ He had to have her, or his very being stood in danger of succumbing to the black abyss of loneliness and misery. "Samantha… _Sam!_" Even as his lips caressed her name, he felt her melt against him and he knew that his professional persona was as good as lost, annihilated by his overpowering need.

Sensing that a barrier had fallen, Sam locked herself against his mouth with an insistence bordering on greed. Determined not to let him part from her, she applied herself to learning how to breathe in through her nose whilst continuing to kiss him thoroughly. It took her barely thirty seconds to become a master of the art. Fully comfortable now with what she felt could be a permanent disposition, she brought her hands from round his sides and plunged them up into the soft curls covering the back of his head, the better to secure him to her.

Amorous mewls were issuing from her throat as Foyle's tongue moved to invade her mouth, eschewing all pretence now of decorum or reserve. His hands moved to her hips, directing the delicious curve of her behind against the solid, rounded front edge of his desk, and he was moving in to pin her firmly up against it, nudging at the now-taut fabric of her skirt between her knees.

One hand slid down to deal with the offending wall of khaki cloth, grasping at the hem below her knee and pulling up the rough material until it bunched around her hips. Foyle's fingers trailed hungrily over enticing stocking top and soft bare flesh, encountering a strip of cotton-clad elastic and skating over the merest barrier of silk. Flimsy, indeed. The leg of the alluring garment was provocatively loose, allowing him to slip his hand beneath and test the limits of his own endurance.

The slender body in his grasp arced invitingly, shooting a bolt of pleasured electricity straight to his groin. Oh dear Lord, how wet she was… any concern he had about her readiness for him was allayed by the silky heat into which he so easily slid his fingers.

At the unaccustomed touch Sam whimpered with unabashed longing, her legs opening further as she thrashed again, her dark eyes painting him a look that told him he was wearing far too many clothes. Then she gasped, "Please!"—though she was by no means certain yet what she was begging for.

Foyle furrowed his brow at the sheer sweet eroticism of the plea. For the briefest moment he placed his hands lovingly on her waist, as if they were a couple on the dance floor. It took all his willpower then to peel them from her, but having managed the impossible, with a deep breath he shrugged his braces from his broad shoulders and applied his fingers to undo his trousers.

First the closure of his waistband, unhooked in a short, suave movement while he leaned in to devour her lips. Then came the flies—he cursed the buttons silently. His fingers fumbled as his urgency impelled him to make haste. And blast the final button on his boxer shorts, made more difficult to address by the insolent state of his arousal! And all the time, the girl's lips melded to his own and gave back every ounce of passion he was lending to the kiss.

The trousers fell around his knees, and he was springing forward, turgid, through the slit of his underwear, pointing like a road sign labelled "Home".

Foyle moved a hand to check once more the state of his companion, and felt her gasp into his busy mouth as his middle finger slid inside her, crooking upwards to locate her core. He stroked. Once. Sam was barely able to contain her whimpers and Foyle's other hand came up to seal her mouth.

"Hush. Sam. Hush. Oh dear God, be silent if you can. I've no idea who might be out there still."

Sam panted underneath his hand, her eyes wide in ecstatic certainty this gorgeous man was going to break and take her on the desk here in his office. And she wanted it no other way. She pulled her head back just a little. "Please. Christopher. Please. _Hurry._" Her words came as a tickle in his palm, which he now moved and slid around her back to brace her as he moved in closer, touching his arousal to her dewy opening.

"Lean back now… lean back on your hands… that's right, love." He paused for a moment to enjoy the vision. Sam's tunic strained across her upthrust breasts. He longed for their forbidden softness, but that glorious pleasure would for now have to wait. Long strands of honey hair had come adrift from her upsweep, and framed her features, further softened from their normal sweetness by the passion they had spun together in these heady moments.

"Sam," he spoke now quietly and urgently—the tightness of her told him that she was a virgin. "It has to hurt a little. I'm so sorry. If you want to stop… one word from you…"

The last part came out almost as a sob. _Dear God!_ He hoped she wouldn't speak that word. He scrunched his eyes and waited, leaning with his forehead resting lightly on her own.

All Sam could feel was that he'd hesitated, and she couldn't bear to wait a moment longer. Her answer was to seal her mouth to his and pull him hard against her, lifting her right leg instinctively to wrap around his hips and hook him to her.

There was nowhere else for him to go—not that he would have entertained the thought. He sank into her luscious wetness with a low primeval grunt of satisfaction, covering her mouth with his to swallow down the gasp he knew would come the instant that he breached her maidenhead.

The plunge was a delectable fall from grace that taught him more about his own humanity than he had ever hoped or feared to learn.

Sam's heart swelled in an overwhelming haze of lust that dulled the momentary sharp pain of transition. Then she set about expressing welcome in every way that she could muster.

He had tensed when he could feel her do so, but with the warm inspiring upward tilting of her hips and her fervent murmur in his ear of "Oh, yes... please don't stop," he felt all negative tensions leave him in a flood of joy. Pleasure vibrated in his every cell as he pulled back and filled her again, struggling to suppress a deep groan at the highly stimulating sound of her quiet small gasps of ecstasy. A tiny part of his brain still knew this should not be happening, he should not have let things go this far, but all of that was outweighed by the exquisite rightness of it, the way their bodies fit together, and the way they were bringing each other not merely pleasure, but an overpowering sense of happiness. He paused in his hot slow thrusts to enjoy Samantha's look of sheer abandonment, and felt a rush of love for her youth, her beauty and her strength.

"Sam," he whispered, adoration shining in his eyes. Hers lit up in turn, and she let her pert little nose nuzzle his, inviting yet another kiss. His mouth found hers again and they were lost within that kiss: its depth, its meaning... how could it be that they had met just hours ago, when here was the clear evidence they knew and cared for each other so very much? As if in answer, she squeezed her inner muscles, grasping him deliciously—a sign of how she might possess not just his body, but his heart and mind.

Oh, the scent of this lovely woman, the wine of her kisses… It had been such a very long time, and he wasn't going to last. He held back tears at the realisation, but there was no chance to think of anything except the bliss of this sensation. Despite the escalating ache within his loins—a symbol of the ache of emptiness he'd felt for eight long years—he knew what profound pleasure would be upon him any moment now. There would be such a blaze of release; all of him would unclench, and he would flow forth, and be free…

Just as this new strand of realisation wove itself through his mindless passion, he thought about his seed. _Wrong, wrong, wrong to endanger her in that way… __**must**__ pull out in time…_

Samantha was in heaven… his hands were threaded through her hair and his body was merging with hers and she had become a kind of sacred music soaring to the topmost corner of the nave… shedding sweetly joyous tears in answer to his forceful tenderness… climbing to an exhilarating height and anchoring herself against the only solid thing in reach: her Christopher.

Never had she felt a rush of joy and pleasure such as this, and, though she'd never known such intimacy in her life, her instincts hungered for his deliverance to be hot and _deep_ inside her. She heard his low dark moan of agonized anticipation and clutched his shoulders yet more tightly, answering his thrusts with upward pelvic movements of her own, and punctuating all his gasps for air with her breathlessly loving sounds of soft encouragement.

_**Must **__pull out in time…_

He stilled for a split second and began to shudder. Then to her horror he began to pull away. If he did, her mind somehow reasoned, she would succumb to vertigo, be denied completion; and the absolute rightness of this union—this feeding of her very spirit—would be lost.

Sam could not let this come about; in less than a second she had clamped both legs about his waist and locked him into place within her.

"Sam! I need to—" In that instant, he discovered the power of a determined woman's thighs, combined with the tight inner muscles of an until-now-unnavigated channel. His cry of alarm became a surging growl as his hips gave an involuntary jerk and he felt the hot seed jetting out of him and into her.

With that final thrust, the huge desk shifted on its pillars, knocking the sturdy chair behind it into the adjacent coat-stand. The tall stand toppled sideways, sliding down the wall, and dislodging Rosalind's precious watercolour from its hook.

The cherished picture hit the filing cabinet, whence it bounced and landed face-down on the floor with a resounding crash. 

**TBC…**


	2. Chapter 2

Title:** Where To, Sir?**

Summary: Foyle and Sam didn't really hit it off on Day One…or did they?

Genre: (Im)pure, (almost) unadulterated Foyle-fluff.

A/N: An antidote to all those fics that make them play the waiting game.

* * *

**Previously in "Where to, Sir?":**

_Samantha was in heaven… his hands were threaded through her hair and his body was merging with hers and she had become a kind of sacred music soaring to the topmost corner of the nave… shedding sweetly joyous tears in answer to his forceful tenderness… climbing to an exhilarating height and anchoring herself against the only solid thing in reach: her Christopher._

_Never had she felt a rush of joy and pleasure such as this, and, though she'd never known such intimacy in her life, her instincts hungered for his deliverance to be hot and deep inside her. She heard his low dark moan of agonized anticipation and clutched his shoulders yet more tightly, answering his thrusts with upward pelvic movements of her own, and punctuating all his gasps for air with her breathlessly loving sounds of soft encouragement._

**Must **_**pull out in time…**_

_He stilled for a split second and began to shudder. Then to her horror he began to pull away. If he did, her mind somehow reasoned, she would succumb to vertigo, be denied completion; and the absolute rightness of this union—this feeding of her very spirit—would be lost._

_Sam could not let this come about; in less than a second she had clamped both legs about his waist and locked him into place within her._

"_Sam! I need to—" _

_In that instant, he discovered the power of a determined woman's thighs, combined with the tight inner muscles of an until-now-unnavigated channel. His cry of alarm became a surging growl as his hips gave an involuntary jerk and he felt the hot seed jetting out of him and into her._

_With that final thrust, the huge desk shifted on its pillars, knocking the sturdy chair behind it into the adjacent coat-stand. The tall stand toppled sideways, sliding down the wall, and dislodging Rosalind's precious watercolour from its hook._

_The cherished picture hit the filing cabinet, whence it bounced and landed face-down on the floor with a resounding crash._

* * *

**Chapter 2**

Somewhere in the depths of his completion, Foyle perceived a strident crashing noise, as if at a great distance. Still dazed in the aftermath of climax, he turned his face the merest inch or two from where he nestled, gasping, in the fragrant crook of his young driver's neck. His bleary, half-unfocussed eyes sought out the source of the commotion.

_Oh, Christ! Her painting!_ Foyle let out a groan. Vague consciousness of what—or whom—he still held in his arms seeped back to own his full awareness. And that same gorgeous bundle, feeling his head pull from her neck, moved her face to fill the gap and nestle in his own.

"Mmm. Christopher. So wonderful!" she purred. She felt him softening inside her, and gave a small sound of distress as he slipped from her. "No, oh no, oh Christopher!"

"Ssh, Love. I've got you..." Dragging his gaze back from the picture lying on the floor, Foyle reached down to retrieve his half-mast trousers and, fastening them quietly, stepped back from Sam, gently smoothing her clothing into place. "Come and sit with me."

She felt a soft warm version of the sharp ecstasy she had just been experiencing at the sound of his voice speaking so mildly and sweetly to her.

Foyle led her to his chair, and drew her down so she was cradled on his lap.

By now their breaths had calmed, and Sam burrowed into his neck like a small child seeking comfort. From the angle of the chair, Foyle had a clear view of his late wife's painting face-down on his office floor. He lowered his lids, attempting to shut out his guilt, but succeeded only in intensifying it. _How could I?_ And now this sweet young woman, cuddling into his shoulder, tearing down the fortress he had built around his heart. How was he meant to comport himself around her now? Her sweet, childlike demeanour suddenly in stark contrast to the act they had just shared? How was he meant to feel, now it was over? What did she expect of him? A fond protection and concern, perhaps, but _please God! _NOTthe feelings of a father.

But already, the heaven of breathing in her slightly sweat-damp hair and feeling her arms wound around him was summoning him back from the edge of self-rebuke once more. He felt almost dizzy from the emotional veering, and hauled his eyes back from the fallen painting onto Sam.

The next thing he knew, her soft brown eyes were seeking his. They shone now with a radiance he hardly dared to hope was meant for him, and as she drank his gaze, her right hand rose to stroke his ear, tracing round its shell with such an air of fascination that he had to smile to think how foolish he must appear to her now.

Sam watched his lids close in a kind of ecstasy, and fancied that his lashes looked like dark-winged butterflies upon his cheeks. A low, contented hum built up inside her as her fingers glided lightly round his lobes.

Foyle lifted blurry eyes and blinked in foggy bewilderment at the soft vibrations coming from her chest. Could it be that she had no regrets at their liaison? Struck by how innocent she seemed in this first moment of "innocence lost", he tucked his chin into his chest and, frowning benignly, began to rock her in his arms.

Soothed by the gentle movement, Sam moved her fingers to her lover's face, and, wearing an expression of rapt wonderment, traced adoringly the sunburst of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

Foyle hugged her swiftly to him then, folding her head against his shoulder, lest she see the tear of poor apology to Rosalind escape his guilt-creased eye. _My Darling, please forgive me, but this girl feels... _right_... as if she were my... _Destiny? Foyle shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs. _Listen to yourself, man! There can be no excuse for this. Pull yourself together and apologise to the girl! _

He swallowed. "Sam... um... Sam..." the words caught like a log-jam in his throat. He squeezed his eyes tight shut and pushed hard at the sentiment with his mind until the agonizing obstruction cleared. "Could you ever—_ever_— forgive this—_my_—abominable behaviour?"

A chuckle from Samantha then. Of all the responses he might have expected, this was definitely not one. It built to a delighted little peal of laughter that startled him.

"Whatever is there to forgive?" she laughed. "Forgive you for... for..."— any number of things clamoured to be said, but every one of them sounded to her like clichés from a penny romance. In the end, she settled for just one word: — "_**us**_?" But in her mind, she said, _For making me feel as if I were in Heaven? For making me happier than I can ever remember feeling?_

His voice cracked with upset, "I could hardly hope that you would..."

Sam watched his face—a veritable picture as he struggled to unravel a whole nexus of emotions. His brow furrowed with concern, but in spite of himself, his eyes still crinkled at the tender joy with which this girl had touched him. A small smile surfaced on his lips, struggling defiantly through a fierce attack of teeth upon his inner cheek, as if two facets of his nature were in direct conflict.

Truth to tell, Christopher Foyle's _nature,_ in relation to the female sex, had not been complex. He had not had many women in his lifetime, and since the death of Rosalind, not even one. Which was not to say that there had not been _overtures_. He'd been flirted with by widowed friends, by witnesses pulled in for questioning—even by arrested prostitutes. Once, at one of Charles and Alice Howard's parties (Rosalind's brother and his wife), a much younger woman had fluttered her eyelashes at him, and he had puzzled over it. A young beauty like that, surrounded by swains in dinner jackets, and here she was making eyes at a man nearly 20 years older (as he had been then, aged 42)?

Why had he not taken any of these women up on their warm welcomes? Perhaps because, as lovely to him as some of the candidates had appeared, not one had managed to engage his mind in the way he felt it should be... whereas those whose minds or spirits he had most admired had not quite moved his heart. Once, to his rank dismay, he had even found himself physically drawn to a young lady of the evening. Sensing his attraction, she had promptly made it clear that she'd be his at no charge... but it was not his nature to exploit such an unfortunate, let alone ignore the very laws he was employed to uphold. No. In summary, his history with women was a short, simple chronicle of abstinence, or failure—whichever label one might care to put upon it.

What was so different, then, about _this_ encounter, _this_ girl?

He still could not find the answer, but... there were those eyes... preposterously large and looking at him now with such a trust and warmth. Eyes that showed intelligence, and spoke determination—small matter if the goal of the moment were no more grandiose than making tea. Everything about Samantha Stewart said that if she had a job to do, by golly, she was going to do it!

He glanced at the small table near the wall, where she had placed the tea tray. The tea itself was probably quite tepid by now, but he needed something to assuage the soreness in his throat. He had breathed so hard, and vocalized so much... He felt a growing blush creep up his cheeks as he remembered. Every. Single. Detail.

And vivid though his recall was, one more gentle caress of her nose-tip at the curve of his ear, and he felt something else incredible—the twitch of his arousal once again. What had it been, twenty _minutes_ since they'd...?

He fidgeted, and his eyes stretched in alarm. He couldn't risk another round inside his office—Lady Luck was already finding his demands too insolent. That he had got away with one... episode... was hard to credit. _Two _would be pushing providence.

"Sam," he told her gently, curbing a desire to stroke the softness of her cheek, and giving her instead a light pat on the elbow, "can't stay here. We have to... um... I should go home."

Sam was less reserved in her gestures. Reaching with thumb and forefinger to steady his chin, she raised her head and planted a kiss on his lips. "I'll take you, then," she told him simply, jumping to her feet. "Anywhere you want to go."

As they stood and readjusted clothing, Foyle's eyes came to rest upon the painting, lying face-down on the floor. He began to bite his lip in dread of picking it up and finding that the damage was irreparable.

Before he could carry out his intention, Sam had bent down and retrieved the picture with a flourish.

"Gosh!" she marvelled, turning it to show him. "Look! The glass isn't even chipped!"

She hung the painting back on its hook and took a few seconds to straighten it.

"Lovely painting," she observed appreciatively. "Do you know the artist?"

Christopher's eyes were closed, she noticed, and that funny characteristic internal chewing of the side of his mouth had ratcheted to ferocious.

"Christopher, are you all right?" she fretted.

He forced himself out of his angst-laden reverie. "Yes. Um. Artist. Matter of fact, I do. We should maybe..." He gestured toward the door, managing a small smile.

Though Sam had made an impressive job of neatening her clothing, her hair still bore a tell-tale flyaway quality. Foyle found he had to quell the impulse to stroke the strands of ginger-tinged blonde hair more neatly into place, and plunged his hands into his pockets.

She snapped to, just short of saluting him again, and retrieved the unconsumed tea things to carry them back to the station kitchen.

Having barely conquered his desire to neaten Sam's hair, Foyle ran a tentative hand over his own, then dusted off the jacket and hat that had fallen from the toppled coat-stand during their frenzied coupling.

For a moment, he gazed down at the trilby and fed it through his fingers by the brim. When he looked up, Samantha Stewart had left the room, and the door into the corridor stood open before him.

Blinking in shame, he placed the hat atop his head and stepped out of his office, into a world that had remade itself in the last hour.

* * *

As Foyle waited for Samantha to bring the car round to the front of the station, he turned events over in his mind. Part of his confusion was attributable to her happiness about it all. Another part was the head-spinning speed with which all this had occurred.

Inevitably, he drew comparisons with his other relationships.

With Elizabeth, his attachment had formed quickly, but for a time thereafter he had loved her rather from afar… she had seemed unattainable, and ultimately circumstance had made her so. His love for Rosalind had developed more gradually; they had known each other since her childhood, with Rosalind shyly worshipping her older brother's friend, and Christopher, treating her indulgently at first, had come to cherish and finally to covet her regard. It had been a revelation when romance eventually crept in. He thought, too, of his brief affair with Caroline, two years before he married Rosalind. That, too, had been a lightning attraction (for soldiers, so many of those turned into involvements), but always there had been an air of melancholy about the time they spent together. Their stolen moments had been tainted by the shadow of her sadness and the awful tyranny of her marriage.

All in marked contrast to this… sunniness of wanting Sam.

And Caroline had proved to have her weaknesses… the inability to extricate her life from Charles Devereaux's being the most painfully memorable. _Strength,_ he mused. It was part of what already enthralled him about Samantha Stewart.

Foyle examined his confusion further. All the evidence pointed to the fact that he had fallen for this girl at the drop of a... _a bin lid?_ Fallen for her sunny disposition and her strength… equally, he had fallen for the sweetness with which Sam seemed to feel no shame at their liaison. It was a wondrous compliment, but in his view, ill-merited.

For—look what he had done! Taken egregious advantage of a much younger person—woman—employed as his subordinate… a person over whom he had direct authority… and put her at risk of pregnancy with one reckless act. No matter how much magic they had felt, he had behaved irresponsibly, and was guilty of a deplorable lack of judgement amounting to professional misconduct. There was nothing for it but to apologise profusely to her, and to give her his assurance that he would resign.

His resignation, he reasoned, would not affect her prospects. Samantha's war could be spent assisting someone engaged in far more worthwhile work. Something for the war effort. Instead of being caught up with some aging, provincial copper pursuing petty criminals for petty crimes in petty bloody circumstances. _Christ!_ He wouldn't drag her down into his loneliness, or use her to assuage his personal desperation. He would give her a glowing reference, and then resign.

Sam drew up to the kerb outside the station, and Mr Foyle slipped into the passenger seat, disappointingly subdued. Her boss, she reflected sadly, seemed to be having a harder time with this than she was.

"Where to, Sir?" she asked him in her cheeriest tone, in hopes of dispelling his (in her view) unnecessarily bleak mood.

Then in that instant, an awareness hit her, leaving her aghast. In all the euphoria of her new post and her excitement at helping and earning his approval, followed by the sheer bliss of their lovemaking, Sam had never once stopped to consider his familial situation. Had Assistant Commissioner Summers ever mentioned it, when he telephoned her? He had seemed quite brusque and peremptory about the whole thing; in the space of one minute, she had received her orders and the call was over. It seemed likely he hadn't considered the matter any of her business. No, all he _had_ said was that she was required to act as driver and otherwise assist the Detective Chief Superintendent, Hastings Station, and "other detectives or officers, as and when required".

_An attractive, good-natured man of Mr Foyle's age… he _must_ be married._ Sam's eyes struggled to focus on the road in front of the parked car, all at once fearful even to look at her boss. _What on earth had she done, initiating the encounter?_

She was still struggling with this _coup de foudre_ when he replied, "31, Steep Lane, please Sam." Her eyes began to fog with tears as she gazed down at the street plan ready in her hands. Blinking back the tell-tale moisture as unobtrusively as she could, she stole a glance sideways and saw that Mr Foyle's face was turned away from her. _As well it might be_, she reflected, abashed. _I'm driving him home to his wife, and quite probably children, too._

The drive was a short one, but by the time the Wolseley pulled up on the hill outside her boss's house, Samantha Stewart could no longer contain her desolation, and began to weep quite openly, but silently, next to him.

Having spent the journey staring sightlessly through the passenger window, in contemplation of his resignation from the Force, Foyle spoke only to give Sam guidance once they'd reached Steep Lane.

"Um. Look, just pull up on the left here, would you, Sam? This is my house."

It was only when the noise of the engine stopped that he became aware of a muffled sniffing noise coming from Samantha on his right, and turned, surprised to see her wiping her eyes on the back of her right hand whilst applying the handbrake with her left.

In his consternation, he supposed that some delayed reaction had set in, and that now she was regretful of the whole encounter, just as he'd suspected that she would be all along. For a moment or two, he sat wordlessly beside her, chewing vigorously on the inside of his bottom lip, and gazing mournfully at her in his shame.

When her tears showed no sign of abating, though the sniffles had subsided somewhat, he shifted round to face her profile, delving into his trouser pocket to hand her his handkerchief.

She ignored the gesture, staring straight ahead.

"Sam," he pleaded, wincing under puckered brows as he tendered the hanky, "for the love of God, tell me why you're crying, will you?"

"I'm so s-sorry, Sir. Your w-w-wife!"

Foyle blinked. What did Rosalind's death have to do with this? "It's uh. It's all right, Sam," he told her kindly. "No reason to upset yourself. It was a long time ago."

Sam turned and stared at him, bewildered and not a little hurt. "A _long time_? It was only an hour ago!"

Foyle's eyes grew wide as he tried to make sense of her words. He sat blinking in puzzlement.

Finally he ventured, "I think, um, you should come in for a moment, and compose yourself?"

"I can't do _that!_" Sam looked at him as if he'd lost his senses. "What would your wife... ?"

The penny dropped.

"Sam, what... ? _What_ wife? I'm... Sam, I thought the Commissioner would have told you. I lost my wife eight years ago."

"OHTHANKGOD!" Even as the words left her mouth in a gush of utter relief, Sam blanched... "Oh. Goodness. Heavens. I'm SO sorry, Sir…"

His wide eyes never left her face. "I—I'm, um, quite unmarried, but that doesn't remotely excuse..."

She put her hand over her mouth and gave one loud, heartrending sob.

Foyle urged her once again to come inside, adding gently, "If you could, ah, try and calm yourself before you step out of the car, I'd be immensely grateful?"

By mutual agreement, they both climbed out of the Wolseley at the same time, but as Foyle walked up the steps to the front door, a sense of bleakness overtook him, as he worried that her crying still related to regret.

Sam was still dabbing her eyes and enjoying the scent of his handkerchief as he ushered her ahead of him into his front hall.

She removed her hat, glancing past the coat-stand as her vision adjusted to the dim light. On the wall was a triptych of English country scenes in serene watercolours: a mountainside river overlooked by white cottages; a cluster of small houses near a channel peninsula with a view of cliffs in the background; a castle ruin in the sun.

"Sir!" she cried involuntarily, then blushed. "Is this the same painter as… ?"

Christopher stood beside her, and she could see reflected in the glass the ineffable sadness that veiled his eyes as he said, "Yesss… my… wife painted them."

She turned, catching sight again of the pained look in his eyes, and ached to chase that look away. "They're very good. She was immensely talented. And you can tell that she loved to paint."

The look he gave her then was one of admiration. How did she know? Rosalind had found solace in her painting above all else, with the possible exception of—He squeezed his eyes shut at the memory.

"Tea. Please," he pressed, guiding her by the elbow. "I need some, and I imagine you probably do, too. Have a seat in here, Sam." He showed her through into the living room. "Warm enough? Good. I'll just, um, put the kettle on and make a pot."

* * *

Foyle stood before the hob, watching the kettle boil and massaging the back of his neck. A loud rumble from his stomach broke the silence, and it struck him then that Sam was very likely starving, too. There was very little in the pantry, but it crossed his mind that, with some ingenuity, he could make it stretch and give her some approximation of a meal, at least.

Meanwhile in the living room, Sam sat on the settee, still sniffing back the remnants of her earlier upset and waggling her knees as she waited for him to come back. Her stomach rumbled, but she resolved not to bother him with it. Tea—perhaps he had some sugar?—would sort things out.

The more Sam bounced her knees, the more she was reminded that Things Felt a Little Sticky Down There. Rising, she crept into the kitchen, and caught Mr Foyle leaning over the sink, rubbing the back of his head and looking distinctly queasy.

"Are you all right, Sir?"

Instantly, he drew himself upright and turned, clearly startled at the intrusion on his introspection. "Yes, um, yes. A little tired. What can I do for you, Sam?"

From somewhere, she found the courage to ask to use the facilities.

"Um, yes, of course, I'll show you where..." Foyle frowned at his own embarrassment. It was all well and good, but there was no excuse to shirk his very real responsibility. As they reached the landing, he indicated the bathroom door to Sam and, though unable to meet her eyes, signalled with a soft touch to her shoulder that she should wait there. "I, um. Just a moment, and I'll find you something."

Disappearing into his bedroom, he delved into drawers unopened in more years than he cared to remember. It was not long before he was able to return to Sam and press a bundle into her hands, with a subdued "My wife's. I hope, um..."

She thanked him, and without another word, he turned and trotted down the flight of stairs.

* * *

Down in the kitchen, Foyle set about with a frying pan and spatula to throw together a quick and filling meal while the tea brewed in a brown glazed teapot underneath a knitted cosy. Ten minutes later, by the time the tea was well and truly stewed, he'd managed something rather nice, if simple, from the leftovers in the pantry.

Just as he was deftly decanting the contents of the pan onto two dinner plates, Sam crept back into the kitchen, with what he took to be her folded knickers in her hand. Setting down the pan, he indicated she should sit down at the kitchen table, and deliberately avoiding too close an examination of what she was carrying, he mumbled, "I'll find you a bag for that. Why don't you pour the tea?"

Sam nodded silently, then sat, placing the small wadded bundle in her lap. The meal smelled delicious, although it wasn't easy to deduce what it contained. But from the creamy aroma, Sam suspected that he'd loaded the frying pan with his butter ration for the week. Her taste buds began to weep as she reached for the teapot and poured the welcome, still hot, dark brew into two teacups he had placed on the table.

Shortly afterwards Foyle returned from the pantry with what looked like a greaseproof bag. "Bit short of, um... hope this will do," he slid it toward her across the table, then looked away as she slipped the wad of silken material inside.

When he looked back at Sam again, he could see her trying to decide where to put the small package, so he held out his hand and offered, "Let me put that on the dresser for you, just for now."

As she looked up and smiled shyly, handing him the small, half-translucent parcel, Foyle thought how vulnerable she looked, but tore his thoughts away to ask, "So… anyway, are you hungry?"

Sam grinned, happily anticipating food. "Didn't have much time for lunch, Sir."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "STOP... um. _Please_ stop calling me 'Sir', won't you, Sam? I really don't deserve the respect." He carried her parcel to the dresser, muttering under his breath, "Not fit to have you under my command."

Her face was suddenly panicked. "Will I no longer be working for you, then, S—Christopher?"

"Please start," he urged her absently, gesturing toward her plate. "No need to wait for me."

As he placed Sam's parcel on the dresser, the bloodstain on her underwear was clearly visible through the greaseproof paper.

_Christ! _He half-crumpled then, hands braced apart, leaning forward with his eyes screwed shut.

"Sam. I'm so sorry..." _Oh, God forgive me._ Raising one supporting hand from the dresser surface, he drew the back of it across his brow, then dragged his fingers down to wring at his face. With a sigh he began walking aimlessly back and forth.

Sam was acutely aware that he had not answered her earlier question about still working for him. She began to worry then: _What must he think of me? For all he knows, I'm no better than a common tart._

The worry pushed her into a sudden protestation of virtue. "Sir, I hope you know I've never..."

"Yes, Sam, I think I probably worked that out..." He closed his eyes in irritation against a flood of arousing thought of her tight passage embracing him, and to his chagrin, felt a twinge of renewed stimulation.

"I mean. Not even fumbled, really," Sam went on earnestly, relieved by his instant assurance, and to all appearances, oblivious to the effect she was having. "A few kisses, perhaps, but never anything that felt like... well, what we did."

He caught the radiant widening of her eyes as she recalled it, and had to shut his own. When he opened them again, it was to run a hand over his head in tense exasperation.

"Look. Sam, you mustn't... let's not talk about it, just now. We'll have some dinner, and perhaps then... we can talk things out."

Sam looked at him pleadingly. "In that case, would you mind awfully sitting down, Christopher? Your pacing's putting me off my food."

* * *

In the end they'd eaten a fairly calm meal, and even managed some cordial conversation.

Sam had told Foyle a little about her upbringing in Lyminster, and how her father often took her fishing as a girl. Hearing this, Foyle seemed to grow shyly interested, and asked her some very knowledgeable questions about the type of fish they used to catch, and what conditions were like on the rivers where they fished. It soon became apparent to Sam that his interest wasn't idle; it was informed.

"So you fish, Christopher?" she asked him, hopefully, relieved to have some ground in common, other than... the obvious.

He nodded modestly. "I—um—as it happens, I'm a keen angler myself. I don't suppose, sometime, you'd care to—" He checked himself. What was he playing at? One minute he was convinced that his best resolve was to cut their connection and fall on his own sword, and the next, he was hooked into the idea of inviting her fishing.

Foyle looked at the girl across the table from him, and saw no trace of regret in her demeanour. Nothing to indicate she felt he was "taking advantage" of her. In fact, her cheerfulness and continued obvious welcome of his company again had him all confused.

Yet, stuck in his mind was the prejudice of being older, in a position of superiority at work, and in a prolonged state of... what else could he call it but 'mourning'? for his late wife.

No sooner had the ill-advised invitation left his lips, than Sam had jumped in with an eager, "I'd love to. Saturday? Shall we? We could meet here first and tie some flies."

Foyle's finger crept inside the rim of his collar. This was not going at all how he had planned.

"Let's, um... move into the living room, shall we?" He stood and moved round the table to the back of her chair to pull it out for her in his best chivalrous manner, ushering her back along the hall and over to the settee before the fire.

On the way, he had begun to question precisely what he _had _planned. Honestly, what _had_ he expected when he had moved them away from his office, off his professional territory and to his home? He had to admit to himself that his motives looked bad. In point of fact, he couldn't be certain whether, subliminally at least, when he had removed their... discussion... from the station, he didn't in fact have a Round Two in mind.

To himself now, he was beginning to look like the worst kind of hypocrite.

Sam sat on the settee and looked at him expectantly. As he was not sitting for the moment, she hoped he would not begin his restless pacing again. He looked at her and noted her slightly anxious, concerned-for-him mien. How dear she was. Putting aside the idea of suggesting more tea as a stopgap, he steeled his nerves and lowered himself into the chair to the right of the fire, pulling it round slightly so that it was nearer the couch.

"Sam. I don't believe—not for a moment—that you have done anything wrong. You are…" he faltered, staring glazedly at the floor as he struggled to express himself. "You are good at your job, you are kind and giving. I... have done an egregious thing, though. I should _not_ have let any of this happen. I don't regret it in terms of the way it feels, but from the standpoint of what is best for you—what is _proper_ —I must not let it happen again."

The eyes that lifted to meet Samantha's were kind but resolute. Hers filled; her boss was telling her that it was over.

TBC...


	3. Chapter 3

Title:** Where To, Sir?**

Summary: Foyle and Sam didn't really hit it off on Day One…or did they?

Genre: (Im)pure, (almost) unadulterated Foyle-fluff.

Authors' Note (and, yes, we understand correct use of apostrophes):

Some wag once defined a camel as "a horse designed by a committee". It was meant as a slight on committees, but—ya know?—it wasn't very kind to camels either. I mean, in a desert, gimme a camel any day. And committees can be good things, can't they? It's all down to the membership.

Nocturnefauré is therefore proud to present this humble camel, and wishes you a pleasant ride upon its back, whatever desert you are struggling across today.

* * *

**Previously in "Where to, Sir?":**

_Foyle's finger crept inside the rim of his collar. This was not going at all how he had planned._

"_Let's, um... move into the living room, shall we?" He stood and moved round the table to the back of her chair to pull it out for her in his best chivalrous manner, ushering her back along the hall and over to the settee before the fire._

_On the way, he had begun to question precisely what he _had_ planned. Honestly, what had he expected when he had moved them away from his office, off his professional territory and to his home? He had to admit to himself that his motives looked bad. In point of fact, he couldn't be certain whether, subliminally at least, when he had removed their... discussion... from the station, he didn't in fact have a Round Two in mind._

_To himself now, he was beginning to look like the worst kind of hypocrite._

_Sam sat on the settee and looked at him expectantly. As he was not sitting for the moment, she hoped he would not begin his restless pacing again. He looked at her and noted her slightly anxious, concerned-for-him mien. How dear she was. Putting aside the idea of suggesting more tea as a stopgap, he steeled his nerves and lowered himself into the chair to the right of the fire, pulling it round slightly so that it was nearer the couch._

"_Sam. I don't believe—not for a moment—that you have done anything wrong. You are…" he faltered, staring glazedly at the floor as he struggled to express himself. "You are good at your job, you are kind and giving. I... have done an egregious thing, though. I should _not_have let any of this happen. I don't regret it in terms of the way it feels, but from the standpoint of what is best for you—what is _proper_ —I must not let it happen again."_

_The eyes that lifted to meet Samantha's were kind but resolute. Hers filled; her boss was telling her that it was over._

* * *

**Chapter 3**

Bravely, Sam took a breath and spoke in rapid, tense, staccato little phrases.

"Quite right, Sir. What you say. I know you're right. It makes sense. All the sense in the world." She punctuated this with a very slight, business-like bob of her head, but at the same time she was blinking rapidly.

He peered at her. Were those tears? What weapons did he have to combat those?

"Oh, Sam. Sweet girl. Please, _don't_." Before he could even consider resisting, he had risen and opened his arms—and Sam flew into them, snuggling her head afresh into his neck in that sweet youthful way that could be read as comforting and platonic. But as he pulled back to regard her eyes, and reassure himself that she was all right, he caught the look of raw physical yearning on her face.

"S-Sam. You-you mustn't look at me like that."

She cast her eyes to one side, bowing her head. A glint of light caught an escaping tear as it fell to her lap.

"I d-don't know how to look at you any other way…" Her lip was trembling.

Foyle was in a fair agony. How could he make it clear to her what was best for _her_?

She raised her eyes to his, beseeching. "How _should_ I look at you, then?"

He bent his forehead into one hand, rubbing his temples with the effort of finding the right words to express it.

As he did so, Sam added softly, "You see, Sir, I really didn't know what I was truly looking at _before_. But now I do. I do, so very much."

To his mind sprang a phrase he'd learned during the Great War—a wry comment on relations between the sexes:

"_Les hommes regardent les femmes avant... Les femmes regardent les hommes après" _

And now these words from Sam were telling him the same: that this was _afterwards_, but she still wanted what she saw.

Flustered, he retreated to the familiar safety of the self-effacement that had served him well since losing Rosalind. "Sam... I'm not much to look at." _But I__want__to go on looking at you. GOD, how I do..._

Sam drew the deepest of sighs, her eyes filling with fresh tears—only _this_ time their source was not frustration, but hopeful love. If that was his opinion of himself, she was determined to correct it.

Silently she touched his cheek, then took him by the hand and led him back to the hallway, where they stood again before Rosalind's triptych. In the light from the dining room Foyle caught a clearer view of their reflection in its glass: A middle-aged man whose perplexed expression made him appear youthful—almost small-boyish; a young woman with a mature manner and a tender and concerned look on her face. Somehow she appeared wiser and more collected than he.

Sam began, "_You_ may not think you're much to look at, but I can't seem to _stop_ looking at… these sweet, warm eyes…"

She rose the smallest fraction on her toes, and kissed the wrinkles at the outer corner of his left eye… "These poor, worried, bitten lips…" Sam traced them with one finger, as he watched and suppressed a shiver at both the vision and the sensation. "These darling curls," she breathed, standing behind him to bury her nose in his nape as she hooked her arms beneath his and held his back against her. He gasped when she added an un-narrated little lick to his left ear, and found all his resolve melting, just as it had before.

Foyle battled to ignore the reflection of Sam's tender advocacy in the mirror of the glass, and focussed his attention instead on Rosalind's peninsula along the coast from Bournemouth. The memory came flooding back to him of the day they'd made love out there at twilight during their fifth-anniversary holiday, having escaped Andrew and Mrs Foyle the elder just long enough for such an assignation. They'd got sand in every garment and were washing it from their hair for days, but the sheer forbidden energy of the entire experience had made it all worthwhile. His problem now was that each moment of the breathless touch of this girl held every ounce of the same thrill, and even this attempt to push her away with thoughts of his happy marriage was only serving to remind him of the intensity—the _rightness_ he felt when with her, the perfect congruence between them. _Perfect_ _fit. Oh, Christ! His rebellious body!_

Sensing his distraction, Sam gave his other ear one last caress. She moved round to the front of him and took his hands in hers. "All these things are you: My Christopher."

With that, his resolution finally deserted him. Samantha nearly lost her balance as he abruptly pulled her close and covered her mouth with his own— a passionate and intense tribute to his greatest loves emerging in the form of the kiss in which he allowed himself to be lost. What use was there resisting her sincerity and purity of spirit, when they brought him the first sheer happiness he had known in years?

Which is not to say that he actually managed to _formulate_ the thought. Thought was now being drowned by sensation as Sam opened to him and tried for herself this new and pleasant business of duelling tongues. Breathing more rapidly, Foyle could feel the stubborn resurgence of arousal and was astounded by it; third—no, _fourth_ erection of the day, after years of having about that many in the space of a fortnight.

But without a johnny in the house, he couldn't in good conscience take her again. This time, he would _have_ to keep control of himself. And yet, after such a tender declaration of regard as she had offered, he wanted desperately to give her something in return—every level of pleasure and gratification he could manage… within those limitations.

He bargained with himself. He would allow this, but it was _not_ going to be another frenzy; it was going to be intentional, and slow, and thoughtful, and adoring.

He drew back to look into her eyes, and her dazed expression almost sent him reeling. To think that he—_he!_—could put that intoxicated, otherworldly look on her face with the merest touch of his lips and tongue to hers. A tiny smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and his eyes flashed. Well, she should just wait. There was _one_ advantage to his age, at least. Samantha Stewart would reap the fruits of his experience...

He had no wish to interrupt the intensity of the moment by leading her upstairs again. He'd left the house early that morning and hadn't lifted last night's blackout, so their privacy in his front room would be complete. Slowly he began to reverse into that room, backward-dancing them both towards the hearth.

Sam had left her uniform jacket and tie hanging on the back of the kitchen chair, and the top two buttons of her shirt were open, so to free her completely from the partly undone blouse was an easy matter. She gazed at him with wordless wonder as he slid his hands around her to undo the button of her skirt this time, and helped her step out of the wool garment. Finally she stood before him, clad only in a slip of tea-dyed parachute silk with a built-in brassiere of sorts, and the underwear he had last seen adorn his beloved Rosalind.

Foyle's eyes never leaving hers, he pulled the pins from her hair until it tumbled over her shoulders. She shut her eyes tightly then, and cooed as his fingers threaded through and loosened all the strands, his lips brushing along her neck to linger just beneath her ear.

Sam's hands blindly fumbled for his tie and she began to undress him in turn, but she was having quite the difficult time keeping concentration on her task when he slid the straps from her shoulders and, gently easing her hands off him, pulled the slip downward until it was bunched at her hips. She'd managed to slide out his tie and had his waistcoat off, but by this time the warmth of his mouth on her collarbone and the anticipation of where she might feel it next had made her weak and woozy with desire.

Christopher for his part was entranced by the paleness of her shoulders and her lovely small breasts in the firelight; he drank in the soft ginger freckles that spattered her skin, something completely new to him, as Caroline and Rosalind had been dark-haired.

Somehow Sam managed to unbutton his shirt and, looking into the soft blue mist of his eyes, she moved the braces off his shoulders, running her hands appreciatively over their planes as she eased his shirt off him. He glanced at the soft rug on the floor before the fireplace and guided her to it, then removed his socks and trousers—this time completely.

Slowly, tenderly, he laid her down on the velvet pile of the chenille rug and reached down two cushions from the settee as he helped her slide the slip and knickers off. Instinctively Sam brought her arms up in a soft crossing of modesty over her breasts, but he shook his head a little, squinting at her with bemusement.

"You are so beautiful," he said in a hushed voice that sent shivers up her spine. "Why would you hide…" he slipped one hand from her hipbone to warm one puckering nipple, and she arched upward into the cup of his palm, a move so guilelessly sensual that it sent lightning through his thighs. Indeed, the one thing he still wore was his shorts, and those were severely strained already by the tensive force of his hardness.

As if in answer to a plea, Sam's questing hand found the very spot, and he gave a low moan at the fluid caress she bestowed upon his aching member. Still, he had to remember his resolution—no more endangering her; his aim would be to pleasure _her_, and nothing more.

Accordingly he set about venerating every inch of her with teasing lips—from her ears to tender mouth, and down to those soft hills of breasts with the gentlest of orange-hued tips. He smiled at the gasp she gave as he ran the narrowed tip of his tongue around one nipple, transforming it from rose petal-soft pad to ruched nub. By the time he had shifted his attentions to the other breast, she was writhing and panting beneath him, and he felt a further urgent stiffening of his determined erection. _Ignore, ignore…_

Her fingers played with his soft hair as his head drifted further down, tongue tracing the cleft below her breasts on the way to her abdomen, then dipping into her navel as he reached upward to massage her breasts.

Sam felt a twinge in her core at the thought of him kissing her in a way so intimate that she was not even sure it was allowed; but _oh, dear god,_ how she unconsciously craved that very thing…

He glanced up at her thrown-back head as he gravitated downward, parting her legs, and she shifted anxiously so that she could be up on her elbows to watch what he was doing.

"This is for you, Sam," he reassured her in a voice so soft, so loving, that tears sprang to her eyes, even as she whimpered and tensed at the feel of his breath on her sensitive bud of skin. "It's the very least I can do to thank you for the way you've made me feel."

He first kissed her reverently, the sweet sort of kiss he might press into her temple, but this was her mons and Sam was still so uncertain that this was "proper."

He could sense her nervousness about it, and he settled her anxieties quietly, his voice so smooth and deep that it rumbled in his chest, "Every part of you is so delicious, darling girl… please relax… just relax and let me…"

Sam gave a tiny cry of blissful surprise at the next kiss; it was so like his very first hot, caressing possession of her mouth, but the lips he captured this time were the ones never kissed by anyone before, and the surge of pleasure was intense. His tongue then delved into her juices… a soul kiss of her very essence, and she bucked her hips upward as if to offer herself as sustenance to his hunger, an unfamiliar low-pitched moan escaping her throat.

If Christopher Foyle had earlier entertained the illusion that his body could remain divorced from Sam's pleasure, he realised now he had been very much mistaken. The more insistent Sam's sounds of ecstasy became, the more prominent his erection. The taste and scent of her was so clean and sweet… residual of a bleached cloth with which she'd performed her ablutions, and whatever wildflower sachet had nestled among his wife's silks and satins… mixed with some natural nectar that was hers alone. He was finding his explorations so appealing that it seemed to him they were designed to tantalise his senses—and this only served to stimulate him more.

She twisted her body in an agony of pleasure as he lightly teased her clitoris; he hummed with the delight of knowing he was giving her such sensual joy. It thrilled him to feel the quiver that began to build in her as he lapped and nibbled, and the softness of her thighs as he sought to pin her down.

_This is almost as heavenly as the desk, _thought Sam through the haze of bliss. And that had gone beyond anything she had ever dared imagine. The sensuous softness of the lovely thick rug at her back, the wanton luxury of giving herself over to his selfless attentions…

She threw her hands above her head and writhed as he caressed upward; then she felt one warm hand trail back down and in another moment she was startled to learn that he could bring her pleasure even more intense… she felt his fingers augment the stimulation by slipping into her hot wet passage and curving upward until he found a certain spot.

Sam screamed.

"Shhhh... you'll alarm the neighbours." Smiling, he reached upward with his other hand to place his fingers over her panting lips.

It took only one more gentle dig with his fingers at the same time that his lips and tongue probed her centre once again, and she was arching her back away from the rug, pushing him upward with convulsive force. Her ecstatic little chirrups of completion made his eyes fill with tears of happiness at the same time that he felt himself being pushed past the limit of resistance, and beyond the boundaries of his own resolve yet again.

In a segment of time smaller than an instant, he made a pact with himself to take responsibility for her and any consequences. Then his self-imposed restraint snapped.

Climbing her body and narrowing his eyes, he fastened his mouth to hers, plunging himself compulsively inside her even before the last spasms of her orgasm had ceased.

Sam shut her eyes and tilted back her head, welcoming him fully as he shifted and softly bit into her neck.

They both gave a half-gasp, half-vocalisation as he pulled back out and then thrust in again, a look of desperate need on his face.

_Wait. Slow down. Don't rush this. Make it last…_ Christopher's brain struggled to rein in his urgency.

With a supreme access of effort and a noisy sigh, he managed to bring himself under some semblance of control. He stroked one of Sam's eyebrows to make her look at him, and gazed into her eyes, giving her the most intimate of smiles.

Then he returned to her lips with that tender kind of force that made her feel yet another wave of flowing heat within, and he heard a breathless pleasured sound from her as he gathered her into his arms.

Foyle set off on another worshipful tour of her with his mouth, kissing her collarbone and softly nipping her neck and shoulders as she gently scratched up and down his back. Her fingertips found below the nape she loved so much a trail of hair—usually hidden by his shirt collar—that led to a patch of down between his shoulder blades. He had slowly withdrawn from her and shifted her position so that she lay face up while he still kept mostly to her side, but his ministrations made her tingle with the longing to feel his body inside and pressed to hers again.

Stroking back his hair to raise his head, she surprised him then by quickly sitting up. With a playful shove, she urged his shoulders backwards so that he was now reclined. Catching sight of the curiosity and amusement in his eyes, she bent to kiss them closed before moving across to straddle his hips. This time, as she leaned forward to kiss his cheek and ear, she exerted a firm pressure on his arousal.

"Oh! Sam!" he gasped, and threaded his fingers through her curls to cradle her head again.

Sam straightened her upper body and glanced down, running one hand from the greying hair of his pectoral diagonally across his ribs to his hipbone. She drank in the view of the place where their bodies met, and his throbbing hardness was pressed upward between them. Touching herself, she then gently ran her moistened fingers over the head and down along his length, and he twisted his body beneath her with a sharp grab of breath, gripping the cushion she had slid under his neck.

He sighed her name again, quite helpless underneath her.

"Perhaps you should just relax and let me make love to you," she said sweetly.

Sam watched her lover's face. His eyes were beautiful even when closed, she thought—he had long, curving eyelashes and his eyebrows showed the strain of the passion building in his loins. His lips were softly parted. She thrilled at the way she could make him lose control merely at the touch of her hand.

Slowly she rose to guide him to her entrance, then carefully lowered herself so that he could feel her first surround the head of his shaft and then engulf his length in full. He hid his eyes with one hand at the power of this surging pleasure and a low sound of ecstasy escaped him. And yet this was as nothing, next to the delirium he experienced when she rose up, still gripping him with her body, only to sink softly over him again.

He opened his eyes in disbelief that anything could feel so exquisite, but she lifted again and he was too overcome to do otherwise than squeeze his eyes shut and groan with abandon. He gripped her thighs and the muscles of his stomach flexed as he moved slightly upward, undulating to meet her movement.

For Sam's part, this ability to poise herself over him 'just so', and guide him in so deeply, was bringing her a whole new level of sensation. The delight of bending forward to kiss him— each change of angle seemed to inflame him as much as it did her, and he swiftly reached up to grasp her face in both hands and lock her mouth onto his. An intense wave of pleasure took her then, not just within, but also where his circular pelvic movement stimulated her without, deepened by the penetrating way he was kissing her. Close to being overwhelmed, they moaned into each other's mouths and then chuckled quietly together.

"You feel so extraordinarily good," he breathed as their eyes met.

She touched his cheek and eyebrows lovingly.

"Mmm... thanks to you, yes, I do," she answered mischievously, then caught her breath and shut her eyes as he stirred within her. "Oh—oh, my lord—_Christopher..._"

Both knew then with a certainty what must happen next. Together they built into a sensual rhythm that would not be slowed until the lovers felt the ultimate paroxysm of fulfilment. It came upon them in a blinding flash, whereupon Sam locked her thighs against his hips and cried out from her pinnacle in such shrill enjoyment that, had Christopher been even half-conscious of his surroundings, he would again have feared for the neighbours. But as he bucked and emptied the last drop of himself inside Samantha with a triumphal cry, the neighbours could not have been further from his mind.

They lay a while recovering, Sam plastered to his chest in a pool of perspiration. Then he helped her slip off him and down onto her back by his side.

The young woman moved a little awkwardly after her exertions in such an unusual position, and sensing this, Foyle gathered her against him, massaging the small of her back to ease the stiffness. He looked into her drowsy eyes.

"My darling, that was unlike anything I've ever felt before..."

Sam smiled at him, and suddenly such warmth and sleepiness overtook her that she could barely keep her eyelids open.

Christopher plumped a cushion against the settee and sat up against it, gently guiding her to turn so he could scoop her into his embrace and look down upon her, cradled in his arms. "Now you go to sleep," he whispered, and she closed her eyes.

Tenderly, he kissed her nose and cheek and lips, then sighed. His world had narrowed to a single person. Sam.

* * *

**tbc...**

_...but knowing Foyle's well-developed guilt-factory of a brain, the euphoria can't last, can it?_


	4. Chapter 4

Title:** Where To, Sir?**

Summary: Foyle and Sam didn't really hit it off on Day One…or did they?

Genre: (Im)pure, (almost) unadulterated Foyle-fluff.

**Authors' Note:**

_"Something for the weekend, Sir?"_—regularly heard in barber shops of the day (we have it on authority). Naturally, nobody 'in them days' had the time or energy for intimate relations during the _working week_...

Nothing else to say. You all know what you're getting by now.

* * *

**Previously in "Where to, Sir?":**

_They lay a while recovering, Sam plastered to his chest in a pool of perspiration. Then he helped her slip off him and down onto her back by his side. _

_The young woman moved a little awkwardly after her exertions in such an unusual position, and sensing this, Foyle gathered her against him, massaging the small of her back to ease the stiffness. He looked into her drowsy eyes. _

_"My darling, that was unlike anything I've ever felt before..."_

_Sam smiled at him, and suddenly such warmth and sleepiness overtook her that she could barely keep her eyelids open. _

_Christopher plumped a cushion against the settee and sat up against it, gently guiding her to turn so he could scoop her into his embrace and look down upon her, cradled in his arms. "Now you go to sleep," he whispered, and she closed her eyes. _

_Tenderly, he kissed her nose and cheek and lips, then sighed. His world had narrowed to a single person. Sam._

* * *

**Chapter 4**

Foyle woke from drowsing with Samantha in his arms, and as reality seeped into his post-coital euphoria, he cracked one eye gingerly open, as if expecting all his feelings of guilt to return.

Strangely though, the serenity he felt stubbornly refused to disperse.

The sighing angel he held was the first vision to meet his eyes, and his tranquillity was compounded by the sight of her, chasing away his demons of self-doubt.

Despite her dishevelment, Sam was a flushed and tousled thing of loveliness in his embrace. She was developing a knack of looking not only quite beautiful after they'd indulged in activity of this order, but also most peaceful and untroubled by it—

in contrast to the bubbling up of guilt he could not altogether dismiss when they had given in to their passions. The patches of redness on her flushed cheeks and on the graceful neck he had kissed so steadily, and marked, combined with the unintentional invitation of her kiss-swollen lips glistening in the firelight, made him long to pull her back down to the floor and begin afresh. He raised his eyes to heaven. _Oh, good God._ He could feel those 'fresh beginnings' rising.

Foyle shut his eyes tight and forced himself to think about the trenches.

_And well you might,_ he taunted himself bitterly. _When you were sweating in a fetid hole, devising schemes to minimize casualties, this woman was an infant lying in a cradle in Lyminster._ A cradle he had well and truly robbed. Twice. And if they kept this up without his calling at the barber shop or chemist's, they'd have a cradle tenant of their own in nine months' time.

He shook his head with vigour against the colourful explosion of unsettling thoughts, trying desperately to shake off the qualms that gnawed at his contentment.

Dare he allow himself this happiness? Was it right? She was so young! But... then again there was her quick thinking in a crisis, her mature management of his self-criticism in the hallway; her simultaneous understanding both of his memories of Rosalind and of his need to rejoin the land of the living.

Sam woke, and stretched, and parted bee-stung lips to yawn. "What time is it?" Her voice was cheerfully dreamy. "I really ought to get the car back to the yard, or Sergeant Rivers will be wondering where I am." She giggled. "Well actually, he'll probably be more worried about the Wolseley. I don't think he can quite make _me_ out!"

Smiling to recall Rivers' bewildered expression over Samantha earlier that day—one that had very closely matched his own—Foyle now ran a slightly nervous hand over the top of his head.

"Where do you live, Sam?"

He'd realised, with a new sense of unsettlement, that he didn't want her walking home from the station alone, once she had deposited the vehicle. He'd have to walk her there this evening; see her home... just as far as the doorstep.

"Oh, only about a mile from here," she told him brightly. "It's further starting from the station, of course. But you could walk me part of the way home. That would be nice."

"I'll make sure you reach your door, Sam."

Something about the look of fond protectiveness in his eyes as he said this, made her heart flip in her chest.

They dressed before the fire in the late spring chill, amidst his low, appreciative sounds of approval at her semi-clad form, and her answering giggles.

It was half past eight by the time they left the house and climbed into the car.

With the Wolseley returned to the station yard, Sam left the keys with Sergeant Rivers and descended the station steps to where Foyle awaited her, just around the corner.

In a way she felt it was quite silly, his being driven all the way back to the station and then walking her all that way home on a still-twilit spring evening, but he was quite insistent that he couldn't possibly let her walk alone at night.

To pass the time they struck up a line of easy banter as they aimed their slatted torches through the slowly dimming light.

"You know, Christopher," she teased, with a hint of the nineteenth-century coquette, "It's very _chivalrous_ of you to see me home."

"Way I was brought up, Sam."

"Would you lay your cloak across a puddle for me, Kind Sir?"

"Absolutely."

"Kiss my shoe?"

"Unhesitatingly."

"Drink champagne from my slipper?"

"Steady on, Miss Stewart!" Then he chuckled, amending, "Any time."

Sam pushed to see how far he'd go. "Drink champagne from my standard MTC-issue lace-up?"

His only answer this time was an affectionate smirk.

"But, in utter seriousness: _Would_ you kiss my hand? Nobody's ever done that."

He stopped and gazed into her eyes. Sam's playfulness had vanished, only to be replaced by a sort of vulnerable earnestness, the kind that touched him deeply and worried him at the same time.

"How uncommonly neglectful of them…"

With that he brought her hand up to his mouth, but instead of pecking the back of it, he turned it over and pressed his lips softly into the very heart of her palm.

She watched the flutter of his long eyelashes, and the instant she felt the tip of his tongue in the sensitive flesh of her palm, she could feel the same restless, delicious sensation between her legs...

Sam gasped and her insides seemed to liquefy. Glancing around, she took in for the first time where they stood. They had walked as far as George Street, and the now-deserted shops were standing still and eerie in the gathering gloom.

Just past them was a small arcade of glass-fronted boutiques, and it was into this sheltered space that Christopher now steered her, purposefully...

"Would I drink…?" he murmured, and then he leant in to imbibe her lips with the thirst of a parched man.

He gathered her to him, his kisses on her face and neck impassioned and feverish.

Though he knew from the address she'd given him that it was only a short walk up the hill to Sam's lodgings, he couldn't bear for them to go their separate ways. He bargained with himself again: He could sleep with Sam held chastely in his arms. He must be harmless to her, _surely,_ after… after both their earlier liaisons. He could just hold her tenderly, as she deserved to be.

"Whatever made me think that I could stand to leave you on your doorstep, Miss Stewart?" he breathed.

God forgive him, but against his better judgement, he was going to take Sam home to Steep Lane with him. How could he even hope to sleep without her to hold?

After a few moments, they broke their embrace, and, still drunk on mutual attraction, emerged from their impromptu bolt-hole and walked on slowly, this time up the hill towards Steep Lane. Their two hands trailed between them at their sides, their fingers brushing lightly in the darkness. Sam linked her little finger through Christopher's, glancing sideways at him shyly. His eyes were lowered, blinking gently as he walked, and she could see his lips curved in a quiet, boyish smile.

Sam spoke first. "Keegan was a nasty piece of work, though, wasn't he? He quite deserved a bin lid in the kisser."

Foyle's head turned and he viewed her at an angle. There was comedy in his expression. "_Kisser,_ Sam?"

"Yes," she protested firmly. "_Kisser._ As in _'You dirty raaat!'_"

There was a brief struggle in the area of Foyle's lips as he fought to control his mirth. "Well," he offered, as soberly as his level of enjoyment would allow, "he wasn't what you'd call gangster material. Working on his own, from what we can tell. But that doesn't make his crime any less serious. He was selling exemptions from call-up."

Sam was indignant. "That's immoral. And unfair. People shouldn't be able to buy their way out of this war. Everybody should do their bit." Sam swung their hands between them by their linked fingers. "I'm really _glad_ I fetched him one in the kisser."

"Yes, good for you, Sam." Foyle nodded once by way of reinforcement, still studiously hiding his merriment.

"But it isn't just the Keegans who are playing dirty, is it, Christopher? Everyone who buys on the Black Market is damaging the war effort, too. And people who... I don't know... who avoid _helping_ or are just _selfish._"

They had reached his doorstep. He sighed at the flutter of a curtain across the way; Sam's spirited speech had reached Mrs Harmon's sharp ears. She'd corner him on the high street and remark with interest about the young lady relative in uniform who had called upon him well past dinnertime. And maybe she'd seen or—_dear God!_—even heard them earlier, as well…

But Sam's discourse had also moved him, and no sooner was the front door safely closed behind them, than his young driver was in his arms again. There was no denying how fierce was his attraction to her, but it was not just her beauty and her youth that animated him. It was her spark—the lively spirit that made her earnestly angry at cheats, so patriotic, so adorable in her impression of James Cagney, and so… Sam.

"Mmmm," was the approving sound she made as his lips finally released hers. "I shall have to borrow something to wear from you if I stay here, Christopher. Perhaps just a vest to sleep in? I take it you _were _planning for us to sleep?" There was the mischief again.

"Darling... minx…" he whispered. His nose and lips explored her neck as his hands braced her head and began to loosen her hair once again. His one desire was to get them both ready for bed so that he could hold her. Hold her close and kiss her until they drifted off to sleep… he had a feeling it would be the deepest and most nourishing sleep he had experienced in an age, confident as he was that his two earlier climaxes had made his body harmless to her, and that Sam was safe from being taken without precaution again. At _his_ age, surely so. Though her sighs in response to his ministrations were beginning to make him wonder if his body were capable of more than he was able to imagine…

Sam drew back and drank in his loving expression. She felt with certainty that the two of them had forged a once-in-a-lifetime bond, and that the strength of what they felt for each other was more than a physical urge. She also sensed that he was still struggling with his conscience at every turn, trying to talk himself out of their liaison "for her own good." And she resolved to keep him distracted by whatever means she could summon until he had accepted that they were meant to be.

"Christopher," she cajoled between his kisses. "Time for bed?"

...

Foyle woke in the small hours from an erotic dream of Sam to find not just the sheet, but the wretched _eiderdown,_ tented above his groin. He scrunched his eyes shut in a mix of heady pleasure and alarm, then gradually accustoming his vision to darkness, gazed across at the very real version of the dream he had just been having. More gorgeous still than the image in his dreams, Sam was sprawled on her stomach, honey hair parted at her nape, revealing a creamy expanse of neck that he immediately longed to kiss.

He had taken Sam to bed quite confident that he could never be this hard again this soon, and yet here was his body—or was it Sam's? The distinction hardly mattered—leading him into fresh temptation. He winced. Eight years of abstinence had a lot to answer for. It was as if the cumulative self-denial of widowhood was taking its revenge.

_NO_, he told himself. They HAD to take time to get to know one another; they HAD to have a proper courtship. They HAD (he had) to take precautions. The words "stable-door" and "horse" and "bolted" taunted him, but still he had to take whatever measures necessary now to calm himself. Foyle turned immediately onto his stomach, only to experience an uncomfortable pressure that rolled him over once again—at least now he faced away from Siren Sam.

Next, he reached down gingerly to pinch himself into submission. All this achieved was an uncomfortable throb that ricocheted back to his balls and made him jerk as if he'd been electrocuted.

He lay a while and drew some hitching breaths, forcing himself to contemplate all kinds of dull police work. No avail. Even as he imagined himself seated at his desk amidst a pile of stultifying paperwork, an imaginary Sam sashayed into his office bearing tea and buns: Two round, sugar-iced buns, such as he hadn't seen in months. And each one with a large, red glacé cherry protruding insolently from its peak. _Christ!_ This wasn't helping any.

Desperate now, he conjured up an image of the wart on Sergeant Rivers' nose. But even Rivers' warty shade was now conspiring to subvert his resolution by winking lewdly at him, telling him he _was_ a lucky dog, Sir.

Thinking of Rivers took him to a new line of tormenting thought: would it be obvious to anyone who looked at him and Sam that they were more than professional colleagues? And how would she feel about his reluctance to make the… friendship? …obvious to others, at least at first? _'At first'_. It struck him then that he was thinking in the long term... feeling a sense of sureness that this would go on. More significantly still, any thought of a future minus Sam made him feel bleak.

At least _that_ helped to calm him down. He turned back onto his other side, gazing at the lovely slope of her waist and hip where, in his thrashing, he had pulled some of the bedclothes away from her. With a lightning-fast furrow of his brow, he moved towards her to restore the warmth of eiderdown.

Sam turned over and snuggled into the restored covers in the slight chill of very early morning, and then her eyes came open with a puzzled blink as she struggled to remember where she was. Two blue eyes were looking tenderly at hers, but their expression also held so much worry that she literally gulped.

"Christopher? Are you all right?"

His look was searching. She reached forward to stroke his cheek and chin, and he caught her hand and kissed it again, closing his eyes.

"Was just thinking about… how it will be when we are around others at work. Tomorrow I've got to go and talk with this police sergeant I'd like to have come and work with us. Would you feel insulted if we hid this… us… from those we work with, just at first? I'm proud and flattered that you care for me, that you're drawn to me, but…"

He spoke with a tight throat, his tone filled with apology. "I just worry that it will be read wrong. That is the _only_ reason I…"

Sam tilted her head, her sweet eyes warm with understanding. "Might be rather thrilling to have a secret… for a reason that hurts no one. I'll be the soul of discretion, Christopher. Never fear."

Foyle's eyes filled with tears, and he gathered her into his arms to hold her close. Could it be possible to be in love with a woman he had met a mere 20 hours before? He wound one hand in her hair and caught her mouth with his in a deep, passionate kiss, the surge of love driving all shame and anxiety out of his mind. Their every encounter had that quality—it was as though a fresh clear wave swept in and cleaned the shore of all detritus, and the beauty of a serene stretch of sand awaited another sweet onslaught.

He parted from her for an instant, whispering her name, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him over her, gently undulating so that her hips rose to meet his and cradled his insistent arousal in the softness at the juncture of her legs.

Both moaned at once and then smiled at each other, before he ducked his head to give her the thorough, nibbling kisses on her neck and ears that he had quickly learned would soon have her writhing.

_Slow, slow,_ he thought. It was not that words were actually strung into concrete thought, but the notion in his head was that the longer he could make this last for them, the longer they'd be free from all encumbrance… they'd discovered that this loving act took them to a place where they were one, a place where everything felt absolutely right and as it should be. He wanted them to dwell there for as long as they could maintain the idyll.

Sam moved her arms beneath his and held him tight, running hands over his back in an attempt to draw him closer. She yearned to feel his body deep within hers again, but he was not yet trying to enter her; rather, he seemed to be making a study of her. Of her appearance, as his sweetly awed gaze travelled from her hairline to the curve of her cheek, from her collarbone to one tautening nipple, from the contour of her waist to the small thatch of auburn hair on her mound. Of her scent, as he inhaled deeply in kissing her behind one ear, then slid down to explore with his tongue the crease beneath one breast, and—reverently—lay his cheek against the fragrant tangle of intimate curls. Of the feel of her skin, as his skilful fingers slid tantalizingly over the modest slope of breasts to ribs to the sweet snowy flesh of her belly, making the girl quake and softly whimper.

Christopher gave a soft squeeze of her upper arms, and Sam caught the look in his eyes. By now she was accustomed to perceiving worry, but this time she saw anguish.

"Oh, Christopher," she pressed him with concern, "you make me feel _so_ wonderful. Whatever's wrong, my dearest?"

"These... chances I keep taking; exposing you to risk; and though I keep on vowing not to, I fail miserably..." He shut his eyes and groaned in vexation.

She held his fuzzy head; gently stroking one contorted eyebrow. "What do you suppose would happen, if we found out that we'd landed me 'in trouble'?"

He drew back and regarded her thoughtfully. Sam wasn't asking him the question in a worried tone. Her voice sounded warm and assured, as if they were married and discussing plans to start a family.

_As if they were married._

He had, on rare occasions when the loneliness of losing Rosalind had felt too much, imagined what it would be like to have a loving partner in his home and in his bed, and perhaps to have another child to bring up. But even in those pipe dreams, he had conjured the scenario of a war widow with a child or two from a first marriage, in need of companionship and security. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined he would have a fresh and lovely girl uniquely and dotingly his own.

Sam went on, with blithe assurance, "I suppose that it _might_ be possible, _just_—I don't know—only once in a very great while—that something magical could happen; that people might find each other and know that they are meant to pair up, even though it usually takes them weeks to even suspect that. You realise it isn't just 'the act' with us, don't you, Christopher? You _do _understand, don't you, how thrilled I would be to have a child of yours?"

Foyle fought back emotion as he gnawed on his lip, the unexpected thrill he felt to hear these words taking him utterly by storm. An image of them as a family came to him: sitting at the kitchen table with a toddler in his lap (he pictured a tiny girl with hair as strawberry gold as Samantha's, playing with a not-yet-armed fishing fly and chattering to her mother as she baked breakfast rolls. None of this made any kind of sense within the logic-fuelled realm of his police work; Foyle's professional persona would scoff inwardly at any suspect claiming he was ready to jump into marriage just one day after he'd met the woman in question.

Nothing, _ever_, had confused and overwhelmed Christopher Foyle in the way of these feelings he was now experiencing. And his reasonable side could distrust them all it wanted, but as soon as Samantha Stewart's great soft brown eyes were resting sweetly on him he _knew_ that she was right, and knew it with the kind of certainty familiar to him only in that sense of righteousness he always felt when dealing with scoundrels.

Therefore, he gave no promise; offered no agreement to her words. But the look that he bestowed upon Samantha spoke in volumes.

It took her breath away to see the cast of his expression; the tilt of his head as the melting pools of his eyes held a beautiful, almost pained look of appreciation for the intimate magnitude of the commitment she'd revealed. As he pulled her closer again and his mouth possessed hers, she knew the vow they would someday make was in _this_ kiss, and in all that they would now do, without anxiety or fear.

Sam closed her eyes tight and trembled in anticipation as Christopher clamped his eyes shut for an instant to align himself at her entrance, then felt a rush of love and pleasure so intense as he slid into her, that she had to struggle not to abandon consciousness. She could sense the concentration in the meditative slowness of his movements, in... deep... warm. He stilled and raised his head, so that their eyes were locked again.

"I love you," he whispered, his breath tickling sweetly at her lips. "I don't know how it's possible, this soon, but I know: that I do." Then, before she could reply in kind, he kissed her and pulled outward and moved deeply in again. Sam wrapped her legs tight about his waist and strained up to meet his thrusts as his breaths grew harsher and his sweet sounds of pleasure mixed with her own. He tried to gear his consciousness back to a thorough, thoughtful exploration of her body with his hands, and to school his mind to process carefully the delicate floral scent of her hair, the softness of her face. But he was being swept away in the incandescent light of this shared heaven.

With a supreme act of will, he forced himself into hiatus. "Sam," he gasped. "My darling, say you trust I love you, for I'm afraid I'll barely have the will to moderate myself in these next moments."

"Darling Christopher," she breathed. "Wholly, unreservedly, I do."

It started then in earnest. A dam burst in him, and he felt his primal need for her possess him like a great, relentless wave, unstoppable, and mindless and destructive. The wave swept inhibition and compunction from its path like so much flotsam in an ocean swell. He would join himself now to this woman in a visceral and searing fusion that would seal their union for as long as there was breath inside them both.

Christopher Foyle was not in terms of stature a large man; he stood barely taller than Sam in her modest heels. But in that instant, Samantha knew the power in his shoulders as he crushed her to him with a force that would have frightened her, were she not certain she could trust him with her life. He felt bigger now than in their earlier couplings, thicker, harder, lambent in his heat. His flesh ploughed into hers, and sank inside her, filling her with a fierce, proprietorial arrogance so foreign to his apparent nature that she gasped in almost-shock that verged upon delight to know the power that she unleashed in him.

And that delight expressed itself in every nuance of her elated, unrestrained acceptance of his forceful thrusts. Sam vocalised to match his rhythm as he slammed his tribute into her, filling her to the core. She hungrily took in every inch he gave her, and craved and begged for more, convulsing finally around him in a light, high-pitched crescendo of completion that embraced and framed his own release.

It was a radiant joy and a revelation for them both; he felt the happiness of sensing such physical abandon was exciting to her, at the same time that she could have wept with the wonder of making the discovery.

She felt his ecstasy wash over him as his warm seed flooded into her, and felt it as her deepest and most satisfying completion yet, grasping at his shoulders first, then stroking them more gently once the fury of their passion had subsided.

Christopher rolled onto his back and carried Samantha with him, still deep inside her. They lay breathless, till he softened out of her. He stroked her hair as she began to whimper for the loss of him, and whispered warm endearments, sugaring the bitter pill of separation. "Darling, it's all right, Love. There'll be other times. Sleep now. I love you. Hope I didn't frighten you. My own."

"Never. Love you." Her head curled into his shoulder and she fell into a deep, contented slumber, wrapped in Christopher's arms.

* * *

**tbc...**

_The outline of Chapter 5 is sorted, but thereafter, we almost feel we should be taking requests..._


	5. Chapter 5

Title:** Where To, Sir?**

Summary:Foyle and Sam didn't really hit it off on Day One…or did they?

Genre: (Im)pure, (almost) unadulterated Foyle-fluff.

* * *

**Authors' Notes:**

Cannoning our way through canon here, remaining as close to plot points as reasonably possible given the (ahem!) significant departures already made in the interests of maximum fluff.

...

The vacation, or "vac" for short, is the word used for the holiday periods between Oxford University terms. The terms themselves have names: Michaelmas (autumn), Hilary (spring) and Trinity (summer).

...

The Anderson was a six-foot-high semi-circular-dome-shaped corrugated steel shelter, typically buried about three feet into the ground, and covered by earth, turf or sandbags. The British variously took refuge inside these structures, or grew marrows on top of them, throughout the war. Families were issued with a kit, and expected to erect their own shelter from a set of instructions. Who says IKEA invented self-assembly?

We really enjoyed **Wolseley37**'s clever, charming story "**FW 1942: The Shelter**". So much so, in fact, that we wrote this chapter as a present for her.

... and we _absolutely_ understand that fear kills libido stone dead. But this is rrrrromance, so please pardon us.

* * *

**Previously in "Where to, Sir?":**

_She felt his ecstasy wash over him as his warm seed flooded into her, and felt it as her deepest and most satisfying completion yet, grasping at his shoulders first, then stroking them more gently once the fury of their passion had subsided._

_Christopher rolled onto his back and carried Samantha with him, still deep inside her. They lay breathless, till he softened out of her. He stroked her hair as she began to whimper for the loss of him, and whispered warm endearments, sugaring the bitter pill of separation. "Darling, it's all right, Love. There'll be other times. Sleep now. I love you. Hope I didn't frighten you. My own."_

_"Never. Love you." Her head curled into his shoulder and she fell into a deep, contented slumber, wrapped in Christopher's arms. _

* * *

**Chapter 5**

The harsh bell of the Westclox sounded its shrill note, ripping Christopher from his comfortable slumber. His hand reached blindly in the vague direction of the bedside cabinet, feeling for the metal plunger that would silence the alarm. One eye peeled open slowly, with reluctance, and squinted at the radium-painted hands and figures on the dial.

The clock read a quarter to seven. Time to rouse himself and face the day. _The day? The working day. _The fog of slumber lifted from his dim awareness, and something lovely drifted over in its place to oust the sinking feeling that always invaded him in these first waking moments of a workday.

That 'something' was the radiant, comforting beacon that shone in his consciousness—the image of Samantha Stewart, his young lover.

Christopher closed his barely-open eye and turned onto his back, sliding a hand across to feel for Sam. She would be sleeping prone beside him; warm, tender, and earthily fragrant from their union a few short hours before.

Foyle let his fingers wander sideways, smiling in anticipation of the soft, bare flesh he would encounter at his side, and to his bewilderment and consternation, found Samantha gone.

That instant jerked him to alertness more effectively than had the shrill alarm bell of the bedside clock. He rose abruptly on his elbows, blinking in the darkness of the blacked-out bedroom, and felt urgently for the lamp-switch underneath the chintz shade of his bedside lamp.

The dull electric glow left him in no doubt that his touch had not deceived him, and that Sam's side of the bed was utterly deserted. He prepared to hurl himself from bed and go in search of her—was she perhaps ill in the bathroom? Even, God forbid, hurt?

A cold sweat broke across his brow. Could he have injured her with his enthusiastic—no, vigorous—no, _fierce_—lovemaking? He threw back the sheet and blankets to inspect the undersheet for signs of bleeding. A light pink stain _was_ visible in the spot where they had lain together, but it was hardly carnage. And a little blood could seem a lot when mixed with other bodily secretions. He bit his lip and had already steeled himself to rise from bed and go in search of Sam, when his gaze alighted on a single sheet of paper, lying on Sam's pillow where her head had left an indentation in the feathers.

A handwritten note. He plucked it from its spot, in momentary trepidation of what he might read there, but the opening words were sufficient to dispel his worry.

_"My darling Christopher,"_ the note began.

_"Please don't be alarmed to find me gone. I thought it would be best to leave before it was light. In any case, you were so adorably asleep, I didn't have the heart to rouse you._

_"Also, I know you need to be rested, ready to meet your sergeant today._

_"I really do need to go home and bathe and change into fresh things so that I'm correct for work. I know you wouldn't have minded, had I used your bath..."_

_—_Foyle caught a mental image of Samantha in his bathtub, honey hair piled high on top of her head, and fidgeted to quell the by-now-familiar reaction to the picture in his mind_—_

_ "...but I didn't want to wake you._

_"I'll be back to pick you up at eight. I hope that time will be all right for you, my darling._

_"Your Samantha."_

Foyle leant back against his pillow, in some relief, pressing the note flat against his bare chest, and feeling his heart racing underneath his hand. For a moment there, he had feared that Sam had come to her senses and bolted.

But in the calm light of the rational explanation for her absence, it was no surprise to discover how fastidious Samantha was in her person. Of _course_ she would want to go home and change. He smiled to himself in mild embarrassment. Their activities had repeatedly conspired to make her sticky.

Even as he contemplated this mundane and tantalising truth, Foyle's mind was racing on ahead and forming strategies to obviate the need for Sam to leave like this on future nights that they might spend together... even, perhaps, tonight.

He felt his breathing quicken. This vein of thought was doing nothing towards slackening his heartbeat, but the elevated pulse-rate was hardly unpleasant. In point of fact, he felt agreeably energised. The previous evening, he had been convinced that he would sleep better with Samantha by his side, and indeed, so it had proved, for he had enjoyed a deep (albeit interrupted-by-a-bout-of-passion) sleep that was the best quality of rest he had experienced in an age, even though, in terms of hours spent actually sleeping, it had been a relatively short one.

All of which told him that the most likely reason why he did not wake and hear Sam leave was that he was utterly, completely spent and languid from their energetic round of lovemaking.

Spent, energised, and now, bowled over by his sweet young lover's touching note, Foyle propped himself against the headboard, closed his eyes and sighed. His heart was full indeed. His cup…

_Twenty-third Psalm: my cup runneth over._

_CHRIST!_ He sat up sharply. Samantha's father was a _vicar_. She had told him this as they had strolled along the corridor the previous morning. _Vicar of... St. Something's, Lyminster._ Where the blazes _was_ that, anyway? He racked his brains. _Just outside Arundel, she'd said. _And close enough, he didn't doubt, for Reverend Stewart to put in an appearance any time he fancied, spewing fire and brimstone at the man who had deflowered and ruined his unspoiled and cherished angel of a daughter.

Foyle's tenderest parts shrank up inside him at the thought.

Not to mention Andrew. Andrew had inherited his mother's dancing eyes and something of her sixth sense for his habit of concealing his emotions.

It was madness to imagine he could blithely coast along in this relationship without others discovering his feelings for Samantha. How long might he expect to get away with it? A month? Two months? Three, at most? Much as his rebellious side felt inclined to tell the disapprovers they could all go take a running jump, this was not _just_ a matter of himself. He had to have a healthy care for Samantha's reputation.

Unfortunately, he could see with clarity that simply being honest from the outset had its disadvantages. _No one_ would believe he was sincere in his affections for Samantha, irrespective of whether he admitted it in one month, two, or three. But the trickiest hurdles by far would be Andrew and Sam's Lyminster vicar father.

High though those hurdles seemed, he could not suppress a wry smile. _The daughter of a vicar_. Rosalind would have said that Sam's adventurousness stemmed precisely from a strong reaction against her upbringing. Perhaps he should be thankful for Samantha's origins after all.

Foyle lay a while and contemplated how he should proceed.

In his son's case, he wouldn't have to worry about sharing any news for the time being. Andrew was up at Oxford, studying for his degree, and this was only the middle of Trinity Term. Andrew would not reappear for several weeks. Reverend Stewart was ensconced for now in Lyminster, happily unaware of any goings-on. There was breathing space, at least, to formulate a plan.

But in the meantime, tactics were required. With another day at work beside Samantha in prospect, and the raw temptations he suspected _that_ would bring, Foyle saw very clearly that the first, most pressing thing to do, and at the earliest opportunity, was to see to it Samantha was protected from the risk of getting in the family way.

The coming night, he could take care of—he would call in at the barber's for supplies, but thereafter, more robust precautions would be called for. Foyle resolved to have Sam seen as soon as possible by his family doctor, and protected until such time as they could reasonably m—

He blinked. _Until such time as they could marry?_

A tenderness crept over Foyle as he contemplated marriage to Samantha Stewart. Samantha, who, in these past delicious hours—not even a full day yet—had swept into his life and changed the focus of his future. He meant to do his utmost to secure that outcome by whatever means were necessary.

Smiling, he climbed out of bed and headed for the bathroom.

...

Sam knew the route home well enough that, even with precious little moonlight to guide her, she was able to proceed without her torch. When she woke half an hour before, there had been enough of the cool, pale morning light in evidence, for her to open a chink in the blackout and gaze for a little while at Christopher, drinking him in without his awareness. Youthful though his ever-supple facial expressions made him (despite his face's appealingly weathered aspects), he looked younger still to Sam in sleep; all the anxiety had fallen from his features and his face was perfectly relaxed.

She'd mused upon his morning stubble—that it might be rather painful were he to wake up and kiss her now, but she still found it devastatingly attractive, lending as it did a touch of the knave to a face she had thus far only seen pristinely groomed.

Sam shivered now to recall how she'd extended one finger to softly stroke one eyebrow, sandy and slightly unruly and unusual in its lack of arch. His head was buried in his feather pillow so that only one brow was visible. His lips were parted, and Sam found herself drawn into a fascinated appreciation of his teeth. She was intrigued to note how seldom they were on show; Christopher tended toward smiling with his mouth closed, so only on the few occasions Sam had managed to make him laugh had she been treated to the lovely, brief gleam of pearl.

Sam resolved there and then to make him laugh as often as she ever could. Laugh like a delighted child. In fact, he looked so childlike as he slept, that she felt an urge to fold him to her breast like an infant... but further from an infant he could not have been. Christopher was very much the grown man. She had seen him, and had felt him—the strength and breadth and power of him. Goodness! _How _she had felt that.

Sam halted. Caught her breath. The vivid memory of how he had possessed her body turned her knees to jelly, rendering her poor legs useless for walking. Remembering how he'd ploughed a moist, deep furrow in her, fit to sow his seed, she was suddenly paralysed by the same gasping ecstasy she had felt as she had begged him breathlessly not to stop, even as he murmured "Oh, God, Sam. Forgive me..."

_God forgive him? God forgive _her_ wantonness in his embrace._

Some of the sheet had fallen away, and she had admired the long line of his upper leg from hip to knee; though he wasn't tall, he had a certain lankiness that contributed, she supposed, to the graceful way he walked.

An ear-to-ear smile joined the blush that now suffused her cheeks, along with that immensely thrilling, almost overwhelming swooping feel inside her stomach as she relived the sensation of being beneath him, giving back the pleasure that he gave her, feeling the taut muscles of his back as he surged above her.

Day upon day of happiness and bliss stretched ahead of Sam Stewart... For now she could conceive only of the balmy haze of loveliness involved in driving for this man, working alongside him, hearing him praise and tease her... and, away from work, the heady joy of sleeping in his bed and making him moan softly in her ear...

Selfishly, Samantha hoped the war would last forever!

_Oh, dear. No. _She checked herself. That was appalling. Guiltily, she reviewed the implications of her thoughts and revised her wishes more responsibly. At _any _rate, she hoped that she might drive her darling for a long, long time to come.

...

Christopher Foyle opened his door to a neatly turned-out and coiffed Samantha, and felt his breath taken away yet again. Her smile the previous day ("_You can call me 'Sam'!_") had been self-assured and friendly; this one was just as beaming and yet was garnished with an extra spoonful of warm honey, just for him.

Blinking slowly, he turned down each end of his lips in what Sam already thought of as his "upside-down smile," and tipped his head to gesture her in. "_'_Morning, Sam."

He quietly shut the door, faced her, and removed her cap. She was impressed by the care with which he cleared it from her upswept hair and placed it on the coat stand. Then with one finger he tilted up her chin and bestowed upon her lips a soft, loving, but lingering kiss, one that ended with the tiniest flick of his tongue along her lower lip. She sighed noisily.

"Thank you for your note," he said meaningfully, hugging her close.

They congratulated themselves, about 10 minutes later, on getting out of the house with their crisp attire intact and beginning the day's rounds. Foyle had let Sergeant Rivers know that his plan was to head straight to the hospital today and visit a returning invalided corporal named Paul Milner. Short-staffed as Foyle was, he had to make it a priority to engage another plain-clothes sergeant to assist him with investigations.

Sam stole a sidelong look at his thoughtful face as they drove. "Did you say that you already knew this gentleman, Christopher?"

"Yesss. He was a very capable detective sergeant, and I asked him, about a year ago, if he might come to work with me. He was already considering joining up, so he declined. At least, I _think _that's why he declined." Foyle cast his eyes down. He had always suspected that Milner had some other reason... perhaps a desire for more responsibility earlier on? He had never been quite certain.

"At any rate," he added, glancing fondly at the young woman's profile as she turned them onto the hospital's circular drive, "you'll like him, I think. He is soft-spoken, quite kind-natured." He winced imperceptibly. "Handsome."

Sam's eyebrows climbed. "Working with TWO handsome men. Could be rather distracting duty for a driver, don't you think?"

...

Foyle strolled beside the doctor in the direction of the ward where Milner was recovering. He learned from Dr Dillard that the young man had taken a direct hit during the Battle of Trondheim, while fighting with the Territorial Army, and had lost the lower part of his left leg. A friend had dragged him to safety. Though his physical recovery was progressing well, emotionally he was struggling to come to terms with his injury.

Foyle lingered for a while at the Milner's bedside, fingering his hat. Whatever he could do to offer this young man an interest and purpose to sustain him, he would do it. But from the cast of Milner's stricken features as he lay, apparently asleep, Foyle came to feel that now was not the time to broach the subject.

"Let me know when he's ready," he told the doctor quietly, and withdrew back to the car and Sam.

"How was he, Christopher? Will he be joining us?" Samantha smiled round at him hopefully.

"Nnnot in a position to say, yet, Sam. We shall have to call in and see him again." Foyle paused and took her left hand in his own, where it rested between them on the leather bench-seat. "Now, listen…" The callused pad of his thumb stroked slowly over the back of her smaller hand. "Nnnothing I like better than the sound of my name on your lips, but _never_, under any circumstances, when we're out on duty, my love. Understood from now on?"

Sam blushed. "Oh. Yes. Oh, absolutely, Sir!" she nodded gravely. Then she beamed at him and added brightly, "So, then. Where to next?"

Foyle squeezed her hand, and reached up to adjust his hat. "Time to call in on Mr Judd, associate of your friend Keegan."

"Not _my_ friend, Sir!" protested Sam, enjoying that he'd teased her. "I'm the one who made his head ring, after all," she grinned.

"In that case," Foyle winked, "you should feel completely at ease where we're going."

Twenty minutes later, they pulled up outside The Bell.

...

Business was brisk inside the pub, and as they entered the low-beamed interior, Sam grabbed the opportunity to make a quick trip to the ladies' while Foyle approached the publican, Ian Judd.

Baleful and cautious as the man was, Judd was civil enough, but he wasn't offering much in the way of information, despite the smooth way that, as soon as he learned that Foyle was a police officer, he'd sent the barmaid—Tracey, he'd addressed the girl as—out to the cellar for some 'mild'.

Foyle knew the form with men like Judd. You stood and sucked your teeth while they assessed your level of intelligence and tried to feed you all varieties of guff to cover up their shady dealings. He listened to the man, head cocked in patient scepticism, while Judd began to dig himself a hole and claim the only business _he'd_ had with Bob Keegan was that of pulling him a pint.

Foyle, nodded sagely, and had just begun to make it clear that he'd heard otherwise, when the hollow tone of an air raid siren started its slow wind-up to a mournful wail. Both Judd and Foyle looked up, in unison—in that funny manner people have of doing even when they are indoors and unable to see the sky—and an instant later Sam came scampering anxiously across the room towards her boss.

"Sir!" Though her voice was high-pitched with sudden fright, she had not forgotten their agreement about correct form of address. "It's got to be a false alarm. Hasn't it?" Foyle's eyes caught hers the very moment that he registered the dangerous proximity of the approaching aircraft engine, and perceived with horror the beginnings of an ominous whistling.

"GET DOWN!" he shouted, grabbing her right arm with both of his and hustling her toward the wall adjacent to the bar. His action came just in the nick of time to miss a falling section of the sturdy cross-beamed ceiling. Left arm securely round her middle, Foyle pulled them both face-down onto the floor, endeavouring to cover her body with his own against the danger of more ceiling or its fixtures tumbling on top of them.

In the next instant, all went black as splintered wood and plaster rained down upon them.

The room he saw, as he came to and raised his still-dazed head, amounted to a scene of total wreckage; chairs, tables, stools lay strewn amid the rubbish from the fallen ceiling beams and dust, as more motes floated through the shafts of sunlight with an almost mocking peacefulness through the smashed front windows of The Bell. At least four people lay unconscious within his sight.

As his senses gradually regained their natural acuity, he realised with alarm that Samantha lay quite still beside him; to all appearances their bodies had been pushed in separate directions by whatever finally had knocked them out. She was on her side, her back to him, her bent legs bloodied by their pelting from the plaster shards.

"Sam!" Foyle reached across, hardly daring to breathe, and shook her shoulder lightly. After what felt like minutes, but must only have been seconds in reality, he heard her give a small grunt and emit a breath of air. Relief flooded through him. Scrambling to her other side, he brushed a loosened lock of hair back from her forehead, peering anxiously into her face, and was rewarded when her eyelids flickered open.

"Darling." He spoke the word aloud, with not a second thought for who might overhear. "Are you all right? In one piece, my love?"

Sam nodded, blinking as she struggled to prop herself up on her elbows, and he took a moment to touch her face and whisper, "Thank God. Are you able to move your legs?"

Her answering nod came with a look of overwhelming gladness that he was unharmed. "Oh, yes. I'm pretty sure my legs will function." She shook her head from side to side. "But my ears are ringing like the blazes." She grinned ruefully. "So now I know how Keegan felt!"

"That's my brave girl." His eyes crinkled with pride at her resilience.

The low moans of the wakening injured tore them from their private world and back into the harsh reality of the rubble-strewn public bar. Their attention naturally was turned then to the care of other victims of the blast, emerging slowly from unconsciousness, or struggling with confusion in the aftermath.

...

Tracey, the young barmaid Judd had sent outside, had been killed outright in the raid. Sam blinked back tears as her boss knelt to cover the girl's face.

"I hope you're pleased with yourself," Judd seethed at Foyle, glass of whisky in hand. "If you hadn't come here asking bloody questions, I wouldn't have needed to send Tracey outside."

Though carefully applying a tourniquet on an old lady's leg to stem blood flow, Sam could not resist an inward smirk at Christopher's glib reaction to the publican's transparently defensive bluster: Foyle briskly plucked the glass of whisky from the man's fingers with a dismissive, "Can I take that?" Then he handed it to the woman Sam was tending.

Foyle stooped to her eye-level. "That's a very good job, Sam," he told her respectfully.

Grateful for the accolade, Sam explained her basic first aid training in the MTC, adding airily: "My instructor always said he'd rather bleed to death than be bandaged by me."

"Oh." Foyle tilted his head and scratched at his brow beneath his hatband, looking amused and slightly startled. "Mmmlike to see him eat his words today. Man sounds a total idiot."

Foyle's assessment of the bombing was that it was sheer bad luck, as well as being obviously tragic. The culprit was a single plane, lost on its way home, jettisoning its last bomb at random. No consolation to the dead girl, or the many victims of the blast, but it _was_ the best explanation as to why local damage had been limited to the pub. He said as much to Sam.

The subdued calm inside the bar was disrupted when Tracey's young man, Ray Pritchard, burst in, desperately looking for his "best girl". A near fight ensued between Ray and Judd, obliging Foyle to step in sharply and defuse the situation. Eventually, an uneasy standoff reached, he asked Sam to see the young man home. Sam felt completely inadequate as she led the sobbing youth back to his shop, and she came away with her resilience severely dented.

Her sadness made no impact on her usefulness, however. Over the course of the afternoon, Foyle's attention was repeatedly drawn to his young woman's practicality and kindly nature: her deft movements; her gentle reassurance of each victim that she helped. Sam had a cheery word for every person she ministered to, and her patients warmed to her in return. A dapper country gentleman in tweeds, whose ankle she had splinted, made a point of grasping her fingers in his own and planting a kiss there. "Miss Nightingale, I presume," he winked.

Sam had blushed and looked around self-consciously, only to find Christopher watching with a warm, appreciative smile.

...

Darkness was approaching by the time they left The Bell. Their near-miss, and the tragic fates of those who had emerged less fortunate than they, kept their conversation sombre as they drove back to town.

"Hard thing for you to see, on just your second day in post, Sam." Foyle leant against the passenger door, the better to assess her expression. He fancied it was more incomprehension than distress. "Nnnot what I would wish for you at _any_ stage. But something of a baptism of fire, I'm afraid."

Sam shook her head in disbelief. "I can't get his face out of my mind, Christopher. Poor, _poor_ young man. Almost too awful to contemplate." Sam raised one finger of her driving gauntlet to touch her lip. Foyle thought he saw the finger tremble. It was no surprise. Indeed, the desperation painted on Ray Pritchard's pale and panicked face was still fresh in both their minds. His agonised features, when he burst into The Bell in search of his sweetheart. And then his frenzied, uncomprehending struggle with the news that she was lost to him forever; his breakdown in the hopelessness of loss. It had all been very hard to witness, and Foyle wished Sam could have been spared the shock of it. On reflection he wished he hadn't asked her to see the boy home.

Sam brought her hand back to rest on the steering wheel. There was a quaver in her voice.

"I... um... I haven't truly realised till now what war will mean for us at home. I know I've said some _silly_ things in front of you about the war, Christopher. And thought them too. I feel terribly ashamed of myself. _What_ you must think of me, I hardly know."

Foyle looked at her with soft, indulgent eyes. Young as she was, how could she understand? And this war, it was clear to him, would be so different from the last. No more trench warfare, far from home, on Continental battlefields. _This _time, there would be loss of life in houses and in vegetable gardens, on buses and in schools and shops. Until today, Great Britain's luck had held, and people had been lulled into feeling that the state of war was no more than a ruddy inconvenience. But for some time now, Germany had been arming itself to bring death on wings across the Channel, and things were set to change.

He cleared his throat, and strove for a lightening of tone.

"Well, Sam. What I think of you is... um... that I'm _immensely_ proud of your composure in a crisis? You were an asset at the scene today? I think you're an amazing girl? And I'm a very, _very_, lucky man." He sent her a look of such burning admiration from under hooded lids, that Sam's spine positively tingled.

It was a short-lived interlude of pleasure, for as they turned into Steep Lane, the dull wail of the air-raid siren rose again, boring into their ears afresh and building to its doleful, dissonant crescendo. All thought was driven from their minds except the urgent need to get to safety. After today, the illusion of _that _sound heralding a false alarm or drill was well and truly dead. The Phoney War was over.

"Pull in. Quick as you like, Sam." Christopher's voice was calm, but even before Sam had yanked on the handbrake outside 31 Steep Lane, he was out of the car and sprinting up the front steps. By the time Sam joined him, he had turned the key inside the lock and thrown the front door open, standing back to usher her into the house before him.

"Through the kitchen. Into the back garden. There's an Anderson." Foyle kicked the door shut behind them and guided Sam along the hallway at a trot.

Sam struggled with the stiff bolts on the back door, managing to skin a knuckle as she dragged the lower bolt across. Distracted by the sharp pain, she was about to stop and suck the wound when Foyle grabbed her other hand in his and dragged her out and up the path towards a semi-circular mound of earth and sandbags, jutting some three feet above the ground. He steered Sam up a short slope to a reinforced wooden door over a raised sill, set in a corrugated steel wall.

"Only finished this last month," he offered quickly. "Thank God, though. Andrew helped me during the vacation."

Sam cast her eyes skywards. The distant drone of engines was blending with the air-raid siren now. "Andrew?" she began, distractedly. "The... vacation?"

"Come on..." Foyle's one hand pressed into the small of her back, and the other pushed down on her head. "Inside. And duck. It isn't very high. Better inside, though."

The door of the shelter stood open only long enough for Foyle to light a storm lamp slung from a wrought iron S-hook in the ceiling. Once he had ensured they had some light, he shut them in, securing the door panel with a sturdy wooden crossbar. The inside of the shelter smelt of soil and damp and paraffin.

Foyle gestured Sam to take a seat on a low metal bunk along one wall. "Andrew... you were asking. Andrew is my son. He's up at Oxford reading English. Came home for the Easter vac." He gave a sardonic smile. "And so I handed him a spade, and told him he could wax poetic _after _he'd dug a nice deep hole."

Foyle hoped his little joke would lift the tension, but the engine drones were louder now, and drew their eyes up to the ceiling.

"Christopher!" hissed Sam. "They're here! There must be droves of them." He saw her fingers grip the metal bed-frame each side of her knees.

Foyle threw his hat down on the other bed and rubbed his neck. Sensing her emerging panic, he decided he should play things down. "A couple of them, maybe. Wear this." From a shelf behind the bed, he nonchalantly reached down a tin hat and handed it across to her.

When she looked up at him questioningly, he told her, "Mine. From the last war. Please put it on."

"What are _you_ going to wear, then?"

"Doesn't matter. Hush a minute." His voice was now preoccupied and grim. She saw him cock an ear towards the roof.

Some distant dull sounds of explosions reached them. Then the engine noise climbed to a nauseating throb. A nearby blast sent tremors rattling through the shelter.

Sam let out a whimper and dipped her head between her knees, bringing up both hands to protect the back of her neck. Tense-jawed, Foyle lowered himself beside her on the bunk and, bending forwards in a similar pose, wrapped a shielding arm about her shoulders.

There was a whistling noise, followed by a deafening explosion, and a shower of earth rained down on them through a straining overhead joint in the dome of the shelter. The noise and dirt sent Sam's head burrowing sideways towards the dubious safety of Foyle's lap. Instinctively, he turned, unkinked himself, and folded his torso over her head. The tin hat she was wearing dug painfully through his overcoat into his ribs, but though he flinched, he held still, in position.

Two arms crept round his middle, squeezing tight. The engine vibrations overhead had mounted to a constant thrum, the air-raid siren blared, and intermittent blasts were sending shocks through the bedrock of the hill beneath them.

Foyle felt Sam trembling; heard her sobbing in his lap. The fragility of the shelter was suddenly brought home to him, and he cast around them urgently for ways that might improve their odds. The low bunk opposite caught his attention, and he stretched a hand across to drag it toward them, angling the frame so that it tipped onto its side. Quite heavy, with the mattress still in place, the damn thing irritated him by being impossible to lift from a sitting position.

"Sam!" He shouted now, over the deafening noise. "Sit up. Lie flat, please. Right away."

A muffled voice cried in his lap. "Can't move. I'm frightened!"

He spoke clearly and directly into her ear. "Completely understandable. Who wouldn't be?"

Letting go of the steel bunk, he took hold of Sam's shoulders and lifted her out of his lap before manoeuvring her onto her back so that she lay supine on the bunk. Sam whimpered, turned onto her side, and pulled her knees up sharply, curling into a tight ball.

Foyle rose then, and hauled the other steel bunk up and over them, so that one end of it was propped against the shelter roof, and the other jammed into the base of the wall opposite. The mattress-padded steel frame was now leaning at an angle over Sam's head, offering the extra layer of protection he had sought. Satisfied the angle of its slope was secure and no threat to them, he slid underneath the metal frame, along the bunk beside her, pushing her knees down and straight.

He held Sam in his arms, and fed one leg across her, angling her onto her back, the better to deploy his body as a shield. The tin hat she wore became dislodged and tumbled off to one side as he turned her.

Now she was looking up at him, her hair in disarray, breathing rapidly under the trauma of alarm. Foyle ran a soothing hand across her hair. "Shhh! Steady on. It will soon be over."

Once again the shelter shook, and Sam let out a frightened whimper. Though her eyes never left Christopher's, her breath came in short gasps of panic. Foyle stroked her cheek. "Sam... shhh!"

Sam's eyes grew wide with fear, and were beginning to lose focus as her breathing quickened. Foyle did the first thing that came into his mind most likely to appease her. He grabbed her chin... and kissed her. Hard.

Pulling away after a moment, he assessed the effect. Sam blinked. Her voice was small between her gasps. "You... kissed me."

Foyle's lips turned down, and he blinked slowly. "Yep."

"Do it... again?"

He leant in. As the thrum of aircraft engines and the shudder of explosions sent the shelter fittings rattling, Foyle set about administering his own personal brand of peace to Samantha Stewart. First he stilled her with another kiss, then he slid his arm beneath her body, gathering her to him as he locked himself against her lips. He felt the tension in her body slacken as he deepened the caress.

Sam's panic faded, and she melted into him. How was he doing this? Chasing away her fears with the warm, solid presence of his body over hers... this was better than armour against anything that might fall. She remembered the earlier sensation at The Bell, of Christopher valiantly shielding her from falling chunks of ceiling. A thought flashed through her mind: If the whole roof caved in, or another bomb dropped right onto this spot, they might perish instantly. But if they did, she would be with him, under his protection... _'Greater love hath no man than this...'_

It was but a fleeting thought. Her mind was filled instead now with the exquisite distraction of his lips on hers and the caress of his hands as they wandered over her body... if they had to die in this cramped, unfriendly space, they would do so devoutly expressing their new-found passion for each other, and the end would be less terrifying.

There was even something perversely thrilling about the overlay of fear; Sam felt it, and in that moment she sensed that Christopher felt it too. The breathless, quaking, shot-through sensation of it was not so very far away from the visceral excitement of becoming carried away by each other's bodies. The more his tongue explored her mouth and the softer and deeper her small moans of enjoyment, the easier it grew to distance danger from their minds, and lose themselves in each other.

With the exception of their hats, they were both still fully dressed—Christopher still wore his overcoat, though it was undone—and it was with sudden desperate urgency that they each set about to divest the other of the immediate barriers to full communion.

Sam felt him fumble for the fastening of his trousers, and resolved to do her bit by opening her tunic, but before her fingers reached up to release the smaller buttons of her blouse, Christopher had raised his hands and ripped it apart below the collar. She gasped, but felt a bolt of lightning through her lower abdomen that ricocheted into her womb; such forcefulness in such a tender man was utterly electrifying.

"No time," he breathed, and slipped a hand inside her brassiere to cup a tender breast.

His other hand tugged upward at her skirt, and with an eager nod of assent, Sam wriggled, pushing herself upward in a bid to help him bundle the fabric up around her hips.

She felt the odd sensation of her broadcloth tie against one naked breast as Christopher's lips found her neck, softly sucking at her pulse as if she were a font of nourishment.

Her questing hand brushed first against his serge-clad thigh, then delved inside his gaping flies and past his underwear until she found and then enclosed his shaft. The gentle pressure from her hand was instantly enough to make it leap into arousal once again.

"Aaah, Samantha…" His kiss grew more demanding as he felt her moistening the tip of him with a droplet of emerging liquid. She began a slow caress of him that built in its intensity until he thought he might go mad.

Her skirt now scrunched high enough to allow her to part her limbs, she welcomed him between them; the low trembling groan from her throat and a breathy murmur of his name were the only invitation he needed. He shut his eyes at the sweet anticipation of feeling the head of his arousal pressed oh so slightly into her soft moisture...

"Oh, God, Christopher, yes…" Sam half-moaned, half-whispered, trembling, and then another violent, rattling blast shook their cramped quarters at exactly the moment when he leant in to devour her mouth afresh, and he sank himself into her deep hot wetness with a fluid ease.

The lurch of the ground and the deafening noise seemed to magnify every sensation as he withdrew and once again plunged into her with a long, low cry. Both stilled for a moment, shakily contemplating that they had made it through; they were still here—here for another chance to bring each other Heaven this side of death.

_Dear __**God,**__ she feels so good_. Somehow the raw cacophony was muffled to a distant dissonance as Christopher delighted in the sheath of tight, slick velvet massaging his expanding girth; his feverish moans joined hers as she grasped him within her inner walls, creating a delicious friction. Sam threw her chin to one side with an ardent, agonised sound that only sharpened his arousal. Her lovely flushed face and parted lips were driving him nearly beyond control. Grasping her thigh, he hooked it up around his waist and pinned it firmly into place beneath his upper arm so that he could thrust more deeply inside her.

Sam ran her hands along his back, frustrated by the lack of contact with his skin, but revelling in the thrilling power of his upper body as he arced over her and then drew back his hips. He thrust into her with an impassioned grunt, then looked into her face with eyes sweetly wide and glazed in disbelief at the intensity of pleasure.

Sam felt her tension mounting; felt the spreading of the ache to reach release. Even another impact, churning up the earth outside, and pelting debris at the shelter, could not distract her from the drive to undulate her hips against his in an ever more consuming rhythm.

Out of the delicious storm created by his heat inside her, Samantha's lips formed round her lover's name and stayed there, till his frantic mouth at last sank onto hers to capture and engulf the sound. Christopher heaved so strenuously and Sam trembled so convulsively beneath him that their movements were in concert with the shelter shuddering around them, and melded indistinguishably with the radiating shocks outside.

It was a joyful climb to consummation. "Darling girl," he whispered, stroking her emotions as he stroked her body, teaching her the physical vocabulary of bliss that gently shook her soul. He shifted one hand up to engulf a soft breast in the dearth of space between them, and pushed deep into her once, twice, a final time. The throb of his explosion took her with him, spasming as he filled her, sobbing with joy against her neck.

White light burst in bright shards behind her lids and branded her forever his just as the All Clear sounded.

...

It was fully dark outside when finally they left the shelter, carrying the lighted storm lamp before them. Sam stepped over the sill onto the short slope of compacted earth, and pulled the overcoat that Christopher had placed around her shoulders tightly round her. Her legs were jelly, and she stumbled, falling to her knees.

"Steady, my love." Christopher stooped to help her to her feet, and fed a strong, supportive arm about her waist. They walked along the path towards the kitchen door. There was nothing to be gained by stopping to examine any damage in the dark.

"Think we scraped through that in one piece, hmm?" His eyes shone across at her, crinkled at the sides, and just a little grimy from the showers of soil inside the shelter. But they were deeply and intensely blue under the lamplight, and his eyelashes cast a huge awning shadow upon his cheeks. Sam thought him the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and leant into him so closely, that when he turned his face, his nose was buried in her hair.

"You smell of paraffin and passion, Love," he chuckled.

"Then you'll just have to wash me clean."

They barely had the time to close the kitchen door upon the outside world, before his lips were fused to hers again.

* * *

**...tbc**

_.._

_.._

_Did the earth move for you, Dear?_


	6. Chapter 6

Title:** Where To, Sir?**

Summary:Foyle and Sam didn't really hit it off on Day One…or did they?

Genre: (Im)pure, (almost) unadulterated Foyle-fluff.

* * *

**Authors' Notes:**

We have an anachronism to declare: The Swan Hotel, Swan Place (just downhill from Croft Road/Steep Lane) was indeed destroyed by a direct hit, but not until May 1943.

…

Long before Raquel Welch graced our screens in a suede bikini, Victor Mature and Carole Landis did a similar turn in the 1940 caveman romp entitled _One Million B.C_. It was released in Britain under the title _Man and his Mate_.

* * *

**Previously in "Where to, Sir?":**

_It was fully dark outside when finally they left the shelter, carrying the lighted storm lamp before them. Sam stepped over the sill onto the short slope of compacted earth, and pulled the overcoat that Christopher had placed around her shoulders tightly round her. Her legs were jelly, and she stumbled, falling to her knees._

_"Steady, my love." Christopher stooped to help her to her feet, and fed a strong, supportive arm about her waist. They walked along the path towards the kitchen door. There was nothing to be gained by stopping to examine any damage in the dark._

_"Think we scraped through that in one piece, hmm?" His eyes shone across at her, crinkled at the sides, and just a little grimy from the showers of soil inside the shelter. But they were deeply and intensely blue under the lamplight, and his eyelashes cast a huge awning shadow upon his cheeks. Sam thought him the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and leant into him so closely, that when he turned his face, his nose was buried in her hair._

_"You smell of paraffin and passion, Love," he chuckled._

_"Then you'll just have to wash me clean." _

_They barely had the time to close the kitchen door upon the outside world, before his lips were fused to hers again._

* * *

**Chapter 6**

For several minutes, they stood in the darkness of the kitchen, Sam with her back pressed against the kitchen door, revisiting the kisses they remembered from the shelter.

Sam's lips explored each crevice and plane of her lover's face from every angle, but it soon became apparent that, in doing so, she was also eating soil and dust that had settled on him from the raid.

Foyle had to smile at her discreet attempts to expel the grit she was collecting with the kisses.

"You know," he chuckled, "you're really not obliged to lick me clean. We could wash the grime off, as you sensibly suggested."

"I don't much _care_ about the grime," protested Sam. "I'm just so ridiculously pleased you're safe. Licking you clean is a small enough price to pay for that. I'd even go so far as to say it was a privilege."

An eerie silence had descended on the OldTown in the aftermath of the bombing. Grateful for a respite from the bedlam of the raid, Foyle took Sam's hands in his and kissed them. As he did so, a new and different noise broke the uneasy calm: the bells of a fire engine clanging its way past the house and down Steep Lane. He cocked an ear and drew back from her, hands upon her upper arms.

"We need to go outside and see what's happening," he said. "Sounds as if not everybody's got off as lightly as we have."

The next minute they were both on the front doorstep, peering down the hill. Flames were rising from the direction of Swan Terrace, and other neighbours' heads were craning worriedly from doorways, trying to assess the danger.

Foyle placed an arm in front of Sam, to bar her exit. "Stay there. I'm going to find out what's going on."

"Christopher!" Sam plucked his sleeve. "Be careful. Stay!"

He turned as he descended the steps. "You know I can't," he said, and the look of conscientious caring and determination in his eyes simultaneously chilled and thrilled her.

She watched him stride downhill past the Wolseley, and stood there on the threshold, staring after him and wringing her hands absently. Five minutes passed, and Sam could contain herself no longer, but set off after him towards the smoke and flames. She found Christopher in conference with an ARP warden and two men from the AFS, ten yards behind a fire engine desperately raining water on a conflagration round the corner in Swan Terrace.

"Don't hold out much hope for the occupants," the ARP warden was saying to Christopher. "Terrible business, Mr Foyle. Direct hit to the hotel. No way out downhill neither, till the lads have got the blaze under control. Best thing you can do for now is stay indoors, get other people to do the same, and let us try and do the best we can. We want the streets and roads as clear as possible in the dark. And sad to say, I don't think nobody's comin' out of there alive."

"Sir!" Sam hurried over to him, breathless, but still remembering the etiquette. "What's happened?"

Foyle pivoted to face her and spoke sharply. "Told you to stay inside." Then his voice softened and he tilted his head in the direction of the flames. "The Swan Hotel," he told her, shamefaced. "Direct hit. Nothing we can do."

Sam's hand flew to her mouth. The stench of charred flesh had already reached her, and white ash from the fire had begun settling on the pavement at the entrance to Steep Lane. Tight-lipped, Foyle steered her back around and escorted her briskly up the hill in silence, the shouts of the overwhelmed firemen and wardens echoing behind them.

As they reached the house, Foyle left Sam at the foot of the steps and crossed the road to have a word with the neighbours, starting with Mrs Harmon, who was cowering in the doorway of her cottage, one trembling hand pressed to her lips. Sam slunk dejectedly indoors and sat down at the kitchen table, head in hands, where finally, she succumbed to tears.

A few moments later, she heard the front door close quietly, and Christopher's footfalls approaching in the hallway. Soon he was beside her, his hand resting upon her shoulders. "Sorry that I snapped at you." He spoke tenderly now. "I was… didn't want you in harm's way. But I'm sorry, Sam."

She turned silently into his coat, and hugged him to her. "It's just awful. Awful!" Her voice was a harsh whisper.

Foyle brushed a pile of ash from Sam's dishevelled hair and dusted off his coat. "We need to get ourselves cleaned up, then rested," he told her calmly. "There'll be more than enough to do tomorrow, in the aftermath of this. I'm going to ring the station and tell Rivers that I'm back, just in the event I might be needed before morning."

Sam heard the tail end of his conversation with the sergeant. "Miss Stewart will be staying at my house tonight," Christopher told him firmly. "The bottom of the road is cut off with the hotel fire, and the ARP don't want non-essential vehicles on the road. I wouldn't want to break that curfew, unless you tell me there's an urgent reason for my doing so. Barring that, we'll see you in the morning."

Back in the kitchen, Foyle stooped next to Sam's chair to inspect his girl, and raised a gentle hand to cup her cheek. "Look at the pair of us. Couple of vagrants, to all appearances." The corners of his mouth turned down, but his eyes were smiling.

"My hair's completely full of dirt," moaned Sam, gamely mustering the pretence of vanity in a crisis. "Lord only knows how awkward it will be to wash. Perhaps I should just try to comb it out. Otherwise we'll muddy our hot bathwater ration in no time."

She assessed Christopher's equally dusty appearance thoughtfully. "Hmm. Fancy washing our hair at the sink first?"

Foyle mulled that over. There were soap flakes underneath the sink, and a large ewer in the pantry they could possibly use for swilling off. "All right," his eyes twinkled. "I'm game. Though I think you're exaggerating the problem a bit, in my case. Not much up top." He cast a rueful glance towards his brow, before giving her a wink.

"I like your fuzz," purred Sam, "and actually, you're altogether wrong..." Her fingers strayed into the curls above his nape. "These curly bits are quite spectacularly dirty! You were above me in the shelter, and they bore the brunt of the falling soil."

"What's the betting your curls are dirtier than mine?" murmured Foyle, and plunged his hands speculatively into the remnants of her shambolic updo. He plucked out the few remaining pins, pushing the tumbling locks back from her cheeks and forehead as he did so. "Christ! You're lovely, Sam," he whispered in a tone of reverence. "Clean or dirty, you're an angel. And you bring the very devil out in me."

He rose, pulling Samantha to her feet with him, and another interlude of fervent kisses caused them some delay.

"Whose hair gets washed first?" Christopher was curious to know, bending his knees to peck his way along Sam's jawline.

"You first, Darling—you'll be quicker." Sam pulled away and bounced towards the sink, tugging him after her. "Then you can do me."

The thought of 'doing' Sam raised more than an eyebrow with Foyle. Sam, he was reasonably sure, was going to be his _un_doing. He fetched the ewer from the pantry, then removed his topcoat and his jacket before loosening his tie and shedding his waistcoat. At last he stood before the deep sink in shirt and braces, with the ewer ready on the draining board.

"I'll give you a shampoo of sorts, then you can give me one," continued Sam, blithely oblivious to the raw effect her words were having in her lover's troublesome imagination.

Foyle wondered at his stubbornly resurgent appetites, considering the long years of celibacy between his loss of Rosalind and the completely unexpected advent of this remarkable young woman. It was as if his reawakened body was now driving him to recoup lost time. In all honesty, he was more than a little shamefaced about his inability to push aside his desire until a more appropriate time, given that the world outside his door was going to hell; but the beguiling magnetism of Samantha was working once again to override his innate and established sense of duty.

Sam pushed gently on his shoulder, nudging him from his reverie, and he bent obediently over the sink. It was helpful in their enterprise that his new young lady was almost as tall as he, meaning that he did not have to stoop awkwardly to position his head at a comfortable level for her.

She began by pouring a little water onto his scalp and working the dirty runoff out of his remaining hair. Then, once the water ran clear, she began on his face, using a damp cloth to gently remove the streaks of dirt from his forehead and temples and the radiating wrinkles beside his eyes—lines of which she was already particularly fond.

As Sam applied the soapy water to his hair and began slowly to massage his scalp, Christopher felt his entire body relaxing; he could not remember the last time he had felt so at peace.

When she had given his head and face one last rinse and playfully towelled him dry with tomboyish vigour, he regarded her with mock consternation and remarked, "You can't seriously expect a neatly groomed individual like myself to touch a dirty creature such as you?"

Sam inspected her handiwork with a giggle. The towelling operation had left the wisps of hair atop Christopher's scalp standing up at all angles. Her finger found the dip at the centre of his collarbone and traced down an inch or two until she felt his chest hair rough beneath her fingertip.

"Well, _some_one has to save me from a life of grime," she teased. "Unless you do your duty and arrest me, I'll be a danger to society like this."

Foyle regarded her under hooded lids. _The minx_. Never taking his eyes from Sam's, he released his cufflinks and rolled up his shirtsleeves. "Better take that tunic off, Miss Stewart. And assume the position."

Sam grinned. "Right-oh, Sir."

Off came the tunic. The blouse beneath still gaped from where it had been ripped open in the shelter. She reached up and removed her tie, undoing the only button that remained attached, then methodically tucked the collar inside her blouse. Planting her feet apart, she bent over the sink, bracing herself with one hand on the draining board and the other on the sink-rim.

"Ready," she said brightly, tossing her hair forwards so that it hung down in a dense curtain in front of her.

Foyle moved in close behind her and slowly poured water from the ewer until her hair was dripping. Sam shivered at the contact of the cold water on her scalp, and jerked her bottom backwards in involuntary retreat. There was a gasp behind her as Christopher took a soft blow to the groin. "Steady on, or there's going to be an accident here," he winced.

"Mmmsorry," she murmured archly, not sounding terribly sorry at all to be enjoying the warmth of his body curving over hers, and the subtle stirring she could feel against her bottom. "It's just nice to have you warm me."

She shuddered. "That water's cold!"

Somewhat awkwardly, as he had never washed hair any longer than a six-year-old Andrew's, Foyle combed his fingers through Sam's locks, freeing them from the worst of the dirt. He then reached for the shelf below the medicine cabinet and developed a tepid lather of some flakes and a splash from the teakettle, then rubbed it onto the top of Sam's head.

She hummed with delight at his massaging fingers and the slightly less frigid soapsuds, and he had to shut his eyes at the sensuous sound. The more he handled her head, the more he was jostled in the crotch, until inevitably he found himself rock hard and drawing the deepest of sighs.

"Hmmm, ohhh, Christopher, that feels soooo nice," Sam baited him, albeit honestly, and he arced one eyebrow in accompaniment to the skeptical little twitch of one side of his lips. The expression on his face read, _'I know what you are up to, you adorable wanton._'

Once he had all the suds out of her hair and had bathed her face and neck, he wrapped a towel around her hair. Then he delicately opened her blouse, lightly skating his lips upon the most sensitive stretch of her neck as he reached forward to cover each breast with a cold hand.

Sam jumped and let out a most undignified squeak, followed by an exaggerated sound of shivering. "Brrrrrr, as a gentleman, I think you should be endeavouring to warm your charge rather than to freeze her!"

"My charge, are you?" he breathed roguishly in her ear, then moved his hips forward abruptly so that she moaned to feel his firm readiness. "Thought I was supposed to be arresting you." He was whispering, intoxicated by the flightiness of her imagination.

"Y-yes. N-no, you are charged with—oh, dear Lord…" Sam was utterly distracted by the way he was now nibbling her ear as he grasped her arms, holding her in place while he ground slowly against her. "Y-you are charged with bathing me as a queen should be bathed," she managed weakly.

He caught just the barest flash of her wide smile before she hid it again, attempting to look Cleopatra-regal as she cast back a glance at his face.

"I'm your slave, then, Your Majesty?" he murmured, dropping his lips to her shoulder. Caressingly, he moved them up into her still-damp hairline, where the towel was loosely tucked.

The insistent feel of him against the taut cloth of her khaki-clad rear was suddenly no longer enough for Samantha, and she dipped her knees to grasp the hem of her skirt, pulling the garment up around her waist. That left two layers of flimsy underwear as the only barriers between them. There was a sharp intake of breath from Christopher as Sam's brisk movement sent her bottom colliding hard with his arousal.

His lips still tickling at her neck, Foyle caught her firmly round the waist. With his other arm, he reached down hurriedly to release his trouser buttons and his eager, straining self. It seemed likely that his own trunks must have been incorrectly adjusted when they left the shelter, for he sprang now from the opened aperture of his flies completely unrestrained against the lightweight satin of her slip.

"Disrobement, Majesty," he rumbled in her ear, and pulled the petticoat up past her hips to cover the bunched fabric of her skirt. This left only the slight obstacle of her loose-crotched knickers to negotiate. The smooth feel of the cool satin caressing the exposed underside of his member shot a sudden pulse of want up to his brain. It answered with an urgent signal telling him to thrust.

Foyle drew back, surged forwards, and by some felicity of angle and arrangement he was suddenly and gloriously balls-deep inside Samantha as she bent over the sink.

Sam uttered a deep, throaty _'guh!'_ that was half shock and half abandonment, and set her private fancy on an altogether different tack. This was no servile eunuch in the royal bedchamber of her fantasy; it was the ardent, insolent invasion of her sovereign person by a rival monarch. And their union in this manner was exquisite. It transported her beyond the confines of a Steep Lane kitchen, off on a carpet ride of guilty adolescent dreams. She raised herself on tiptoe, all the better to accept him, as his free hand crept around, and up to knead her breast.

"This won't do," he breathed, even as he thrust, withdrew in perfect ecstasy, and thrust again. Hearing her whimpers of abandon growing, his stubborn conscience rose against the inelegance of such a venal coupling. He should not impose himself upon her in this way. Wasn't it his duty, as the senior partner in their lovemaking, to retain a semblance of decorum? What would Samantha think of him, once the euphoria of lust had faded and her eyes refocused on the down-to-earth reality of the kitchen sink?

His answer came in firm tones from the lithe form undulating hungrily beneath him. "Don't you _dare_ stop, Christopher," Sam warned him sharply. The supreme effort she had put into enunciating the command was immediately apparent, for no sooner had the terse instruction left her lips, than her tone reverted to its former hollow, throaty sobs, in cadence with the steady rhythm of his thrusts.

The sensation was just too delicious to endure for long. Pinned now against the deep sink at the thigh, Sam moved one arm to brace herself against the windowsill, and Christopher's restraining hand slid from her waist to stroke between her legs. The muscles of her calves went rigid with the strain of staying on her toes, and the rising tempo of their dance dislodged the towel from around her head, sending damp locks tumbling in a curtain round her cheeks.

"_Please_ don't stop! Darling! Ah!" It was a sobbed entreaty now, and though heartfelt, quite unnecessary. For Foyle was well beyond the point of no return. The hand upon her breast became an anchor-point to hold her fast against him while his other hand massaged her into frenzied hunger for the ravishment his plunging hardness was delivering to her core. Through his mind raced all the noise, and smells and horror of destruction he had witnessed in the last war, melding with the fresh abominations of the raid.

But they were dull and distant presences against the vivid power of this intense impulsion to achieve, complete, release, and bring Samantha with him in the here-and-now. His expert fingers worked their magic on her tender flesh, the force of his desire thrust in through tight, moist, unresisting inner walls. His breath was hard against her neck. Her cries were unrestrained, and as she shuddered her completion, the sound of them inflamed him with the exhilarating knowledge he could bring her such abandoned pleasure.

Christopher's own growl of unfettered passion mixed with Sam's gasps as he felt the mounting pressure of his pending physical release… Where was so much coming from, when he'd only just…? Didn't matter… just, _oh, God…_ He pressed his cheek firmly alongside Samantha's and breathed deeply of the sweet, wet hair now caught between their faces.

And then he came.

And it was strong and rich, with that now-familiar outpouring of heat and surging relief. Sam was weeping at the bitter sweetness of a pleasure ended, blended with the happy promise implied in the intensity of their union.

Foyle turned her in his arms and held her with an anxious and determined force, his hand cradling her head as he crooned in her ear, "Shhhh, oh my _darling _girl… are you all right? Is it…?"

Weak-kneed, Sam reciprocated, stroking at his hair and gazing deep into his eyes. She struggled to regain a regular pattern of breathing after the exertion of body and emotion, so that she could explain and put his mind at rest.

"Tears of… oh, I don't know, such a mix of things, but mainly gratefulness to God," she sputtered, "for bringing me to you."

Her eyes still brimmed, but Foyle could see the glow of joy within their soft brown depths.

He nodded. "Meant to be," then searched her eyes one more time—one more reassurance that all her breathlessness and tears were indicators of good things and not bad. Satisfied at last, he adjusted her clothing and his own, just enough to render them decent for the walk upstairs.

…

Inside the bathroom Foyle began running hot water into the tub, then stood before Sam, tenderly removing her poor abused blouse in a marked contrast to his earlier treatment of it.

She could have shed new tears at the look of reverence on his face as he finished undressing her, then motioned for her to hop into the fresh hot water.

He knelt beside her. "Want some privacy?"

She shook her head. Not only did she feel a need for closeness to him that bordered on a fear of letting him out of her sight, but she wanted every single thing they did until they slept to be _together._

As Sam lowered herself into the water, the sudden contrast of its warmth against the cooler atmosphere inside the bathroom sent an involuntary shudder through her body.

"Too cold in here?" Christopher perched on the side of the bathtub at her head, and rubbed his hands briskly up and down between elbow and shoulder to drive away her shivers. "I can bring a heater if you like." He made to rise, but she stopped him.

"Nunno, it's all right. It was just momentary." Sam smiled up at him, and stole a kiss.

"Shall I do your back?" he asked, reaching for the natural sponge perched in the corner just beside him. "Warm water down your spine dispels the chills."

"Mmm. Please…"

He watched Sam wrap her arms across her milky breasts and lean forwards to support herself against her slightly up-bent knees. Her back was now a long, smooth curve of supple ivory flesh, shoulders sprinkled with pale ginger freckles like flecks of lily-pollen on a pristine tablecloth. As he plunged the sponge into the water just behind the soft arc of her spine, Foyle almost found himself in fear of rinsing them away.

Taking the bar of coal tar soap he kept in a ceramic dish on the narrow tiled shelf now serving as his precarious perch, he worked the wet sponge up into a pale, wholesome-smelling lather. Then, lifting Samantha's still-damp hair clear of her neck, he began to bathe her in soft, circular motions that started at her delicate, narrow shoulders and spiralled down the full length of her spine, dipping just below the water line to graze the small of her back.

Sam hummed in soft rapture at the sensual pleasure of his touch. "Oh Darling, that feels absolutely heavenly."

Christopher quirked an eyebrow. "Imagine what it does to me." He knelt back down beside her, and dunked the sponge again into the water, applying himself once more in workmanlike fashion to the task of loading it with lather.

He had rolled his shirtsleeves up to the elbows and Sam shyly lifted an index finger to trace over the soft carpet of greying hairs on his forearm. She shivered to feel the corded sinews flexing beneath the skin as he worked the soap into the sponge.

"So strong," she breathed. Those arms. The wrists so much sturdier than her own. His forearms so much more powerful. His square hands, though easily large enough to envelop hers—broad enough, even, to cover an entire breast—yet gentle enough to fondle and to stroke her into breathless ecstasies. And soft enough to bathe her now with such sweet tenderness and patience.

As Sam's eyes turned upon him they darkened into bottomless pools of adoration, and as he glanced up from his duties, Christopher found himself tumbling helplessly into them yet again.

The gentle but insistent pressure of his lips on hers eased Sam backwards so that she now reclined against the white enamel slope of the bath. Even as they continued their caresses, Christopher began to run the soapy sponge around her breasts and belly, gliding down and past her hip along one thigh.

"You're quite a grubby girl today," he mumbled into her, against a giggle. "Got my work cut out for me, here."

Sam kinked one knee to aid her balance in the tub, squeaking in sudden excitement to find herself upended. Christopher's hand had caught her under the crook of the knee and trailed along her calf to grasp her by the ankle. Raising her foot aloft, he then proceeded to sponge her leg, unhurriedly, from thigh to toe, a look of earnest concentration on his face as he traced the length and contours of one pale, athletic limb. An image of her chasing heartily across a high school hockey pitch with a boisterous bunch of other girls pushed itself into his mind unbidden, and raised a smile.

"You know," he told her with a twitch of the lip, before pressing a reverential kiss to the silken curve of her calf, "this is the only time I have ever bathed a woman top-to-toe."

Sam was well beyond blushing. "Considering you've made me thoroughly and repeatedly very sticky," she observed with lazy pleasure, "not to mention rolling me in a metal drum beneath a vegetable patch… I'd say it was the least that you can do."

Foyle answered with a crooked smile, and turned his attention to bathing her other leg. When he had finished, he handed her the sponge.

"You'd better do the other bits yourself." He gave her a knowing look. "I wouldn't trust myself to stop once you were clean."

Sam was grinning broadly when he left the bathroom, announcing he was off to get some clothes, and obediently finished her ablutions by herself.

A few moments later, Christopher reappeared with two dressing gowns, one of which had obviously once belonged to Rosalind. Silently he laid them across the closed lid of the lavatory, then proceeded to strip his own clothes off, dropping his linens in the laundry basket, and hanging his trousers on the back of the bathroom door.

From her warm and soapy vantage point, Sam watched him disrobe with rapt attention. This was to be their first occasion of being completely naked together in a well-lit room, without the protection of at least a sheet, and she found herself now making a careful study of her man.

With no real-life points of comparison to draw upon, Sam used instead as her references Victor Mature's cave-man in _Man and his Mate._ and Johnny Weissmuller's tousled lord of the jungle from the _Tarzan _films of her childhood. The impression now forming in her mind was that, as masculine chests went, Christopher must be pretty fit—if a bit soft around the midriff. But she actually found that aspect of him rather sweet; the breadth of his shoulders and the power of his upper arms more than compensating for the slight roundness between ribcage and navel.

Feeling his young lady's gaze upon him, Foyle, for the first time in eight years, consciously pulled in his gut. Sam, equally consciously, pretended not to notice as he did so.

This was also, she realised, the first time she had seen _that_ part of him flaccid, and though she was not naïve enough to imagine that such shrinkage was unusual, it was nevertheless a source of morbid fascination for her. Nor did the direction of her gaze escape her lover, who, far from being embarrassed (in the way that he had been about his midriff), simply looked down at himself, and chuckled up at her indulgently.

"'Fraid you've killed it for a bit."

"Sorry," she grinned. "It's just, I'm used to seeing it magnificent. Now it's just…"—he raised a teasingly expectant eyebrow, waiting for her to continue, which she obligingly did—"immensely sweet."

A wave of pride and tenderness suffused Christopher Foyle. Admired and cherished in a way he hadn't known since Rosalind, he suddenly felt quite heady on his own good fortune. Before he even reached the bath, the state of him had altered from _immensely sweet_ to _verging-on-magnificent._

"Oh, I say…" Still seated in the bath, Sam found herself eye-to-eye with the imposing evidence.

His finger gently sealed her lips. "Ignore it. It's a greedy, headstrong child with no real sense of moderation. Now, then. Are you getting out? I don't think we'll both fit in there, even with our recent habit of, um, closeness."

"Share a bath!" beamed Sam, recalling happy memories from her childhood. "We used to do that all the time when my cousins came to stay. All of us in together! It was jolly!"

Foyle thought that _jolly_ was not quite the epithet he would have chosen to describe the anticipated experience of sharing a bath with Sam. "Your cousins, and you, were a good deal smaller in those days, I'd imagine," he reminded her. _Days when you were already a grown man, Foyle,_ he reminded himself ruefully, before adding, "Best if you get out, I think."

Once Sam had pushed herself to her feet, Christopher offered her a hand for balance, then wrapped an arm around her waist, and issuing a command of "Jump!" he bent his knees and swung her deftly over the rim of the bath as if she were a sack of feathers. When Sam's feet touched the towel placed n preparation on the black-and-white-tiles of the bathroom floor, her arms were already slung about his neck, and she was pressing tight against him once again.

"Whoa-no!" Foyle pulled his lower body back abruptly. "No more of this. Bath time for me. Otherwise, every bit of good work we've already done on you will be in vain." With that, he disengaged himself and climbed into the tub, leaving Sam to towel herself dry and don the robe he'd brought in for her.

It felt a little strange to Sam now to be wearing a dead woman's dressing gown, but, she mused, it was no more peculiar than the feel of walking home the previous day in her lover's late wife's knickers. And on reflection, as she stroked the heavy satin of the robe and gazed dreamily across at Christopher, diligently fielding the soapy sponge and attacking his own coating of grime, she concluded that second-hand didn't by any means signify second-best.

Suddenly, and urgently, Sam wanted to know the history of her man, and any women he had loved before her. It wasn't a compulsion born of jealousy, but of caring. She knotted her damp hair into a loose plait, then sank onto her knees, pushing back the long voluminous sleeves of the robe, and planted her forearms along the rim of the bath, before settling her chin on her hands.

"Tell me about her, Christopher. Please?"

Already soaped up to the eyebrows, Foyle couldn't help but think Sam might have picked a better time to broach the subject, but he could see from the intensity of her expression that it wouldn't be a good idea to fob her off. And so he made a silent pact to start as simply as he could. Swilling off his sudsy features with a cupped handful or two of water, he dried himself on a convenient facecloth and began:

"Her name was Rosalind." _My gentle Rose._ He pinched his nose, finding that the soap, or something, was stinging at his eyes.

"We married when she was very young. And when she died, which she did at twenty-nine—from typhoid—it left us reeling, Andrew and me."

"Oh, _Chris_topher!" Sam reached a hand out to caress his cheek, and turn his chin so that his eyes met hers. "How sad. I'm so sorry."

He nodded. "I was working hard, and looking after my son. But no use pretending that the heart didn't ebb out of our lives when we lost her. We did our best, you know. Andrew was old enough to plough himself into his school and interests. I had my work. But two men rattling round together in a house doesn't make for an easy home."

"You and, er, Andrew… were on bad terms?"

"Nunno, Sam. Never that. But Rosalind had always been the glue. Suppose we each of us decided we refused to burden the other with our grief. So in the end, we simply didn't talk about it. Probably hasn't done either of us much good."

Sam nodded sagely. "Yes, I understand, my darling. Men don't discuss their feelings much." She took the sponge from his fingers and pushed him gently forwards. "Going to wash your back."

A sad smile warmed Christopher's face. "You're a remarkable girl," he said, then rested his forehead on his kneecaps as he relaxed forwards, arms round knees. "No idea what I've done to deserve you."

Her voice was tender as she drew the soft sponge gently down his back. "I could say exactly the same to you."

He turned and cast her an appreciative glance. "Suppose we must've both done something good at some point, then."

She nodded with an answering smile, but didn't meet his eyes. Instead she kept a businesslike attention on the absorbing task of his ablutions, working up a small lather on his chest hair with the bar of soap. "You said you married young. How old was Rosalind?"

"Sixteen. And I was twenty-three." He paused. "Sam…" Suddenly, he seemed impatient to be done with the subject. "There's more to tell… but I'd rather tell you later. 'Sooner today is over the better, wouldn't you say?"

"It would be hard to disagree with that," Sam gave a nervous laugh, followed by a pleading look. "Have I upset you?"

Christopher took her face between his hands. "No, sweet girl. It was a long, long time ago, now. But in a way it still reminds me how our passions rule us, even when we fancy we're beyond such things."

Sam's puzzled look tore at his heartstrings.

"Bear with me, Sam. I'll tell you later. Promise." He gave her his most melting smile to reassure her, followed by a soft chuckle. "Meanwhile, there's a mountain of grit in the bottom of this tub, and it's scratching my tender parts. Let's finish up, here."

…

They changed the bed with brisk efficiency, and crawled gratefully between clean, crisp sheets, where they spooned together, with Christopher folding himself around Samantha. He kissed her still-damp hair and told her in a soft voice, "I want you to know everything about me. No secrets. But for now, my love, please sleep."

And soon, and blissfully, they slept.

* * *

**...tbc  
**

**********Running Total [guess what we're counting, and it isn't chapters]: 6 **

**Authors' Endnote:**

_Foyle's War_ presents us with a real timeline dilemma concerning Rosalind and Andrew. The dates on Rosalind Foyle's gravestone—June 1902–February 1932—are problematic. Canon has Andrew stating that he was eight when his mother died. Given that he is already at university in 1940 (_The German Woman_ S1E1) when he joins the RAF, and clearly _not_ a sixteen-year-old, we first must challenge and discard that notion. His father variously describes him as 23 and 22 before 1941.

If Andrew was born in 1918 and his mother in 1902, the evidence points to Rosalind as a sixteen-year-old bride—perhaps even a fifteen-year-old one!

So. We're currently debating what to do about this. How much of a cradle-snatcher is Christopher Foyle?


End file.
